Chapter 15 - Linda Had Planned a Murder TooSarah looked through the observation-room glass at Linda.
For the first time, the older woman didn't look frightened.
She looked defeated.
Ortiz placed the transcript from Emma's recording on the table.
Linda read the sentence.
It's happening tonight. Make sure Wade doesn't leave alive.
Her eyes closed.
“Who were you talking to?”
Linda requested her attorney.
He advised silence.
Sarah watched from outside and felt something inside her settle.
There would be no more benefit of the doubt.
Linda wasn't simply a woman manipulated by Wade.
She had been planning against him too.
Maybe that was why everything collapsed.
Later, after negotiations over cooperation, Linda talked.
“I wanted out.”
Ortiz sat across from her.
“You planned to kill Wade.”
“I planned to expose him.”
“Emma heard you say not to let him leave alive.”
Linda looked toward the mirrored glass.
“I wasn't speaking literally.”
Sarah laughed bitterly from the observation room.
Ortiz didn't.
“Who were you calling?”
“Melissa.”
Silence.
Even Linda's attorney looked surprised.
Sarah stared.
Linda and Melissa had been secretly working together against Wade?
Or Linda thought they were.
“She told me she wanted Wade gone,” Linda continued.
“Gone how?”
“Out of the company. Out of our lives.”
“What did Melissa promise?”
“To help me hand financial records to federal investigators.”
“Why privately?”
“Because Wade had people everywhere.”
Ortiz leaned back.
“You trusted the woman helping him steal Daniel's company?”
“I didn't know.”
The web wasn't three criminals acting together.
It was three criminals betraying each other.
Wade believed Linda remained loyal.
Linda believed Melissa was helping her escape Wade.
Melissa apparently intended to remove both.
“And Tuesday night?”
“Melissa was supposed to meet Wade at the cabin.”
“Why?”
“To take the financial drive and disappear with him.”
“That was the story you gave Wade?”
“Yes.”
“But Melissa was actually supposed to deliver him to investigators?”
Linda lowered her eyes.
“That was what she told me.”
“Did any investigators know?”
“No.”
Ortiz almost smiled.
“So you planned an imaginary federal operation using a woman you barely trusted.”
“I was desperate.”
“You were criminal.”
Linda said nothing.
“What happened when Emma appeared?”
“Everything changed.”
Linda admitted panicking.
Admitted keeping Emma in the room.
Admitted shaving her hair.
Admitted transporting her.
Every sentence made Sarah want to break the glass.
But Linda insisted she never agreed to Emma's death.
At the yard, Melissa arrived unexpectedly.
She told Wade the child was now too dangerous.
Wade resisted.
Not from morality.
From practicality.
A dead seven-year-old would trigger an enormous investigation.
Melissa argued that Emma could identify all three of them.
Linda begged them to leave her somewhere she would be found.
“That is what I thought the shallow hole was,” Linda whispered.
Ortiz stared.
“You thought burying an unconscious child beneath dirt and branches was a way to leave her somewhere safe?”
Linda began crying.
“I thought she'd wake up.”
“She almost didn't.”
“I know.”
“No,” Ortiz said. “You know she survived. That's different.”
Linda flinched.
According to her, Melissa covered Emma more heavily after Wade walked back toward the SUV.
Linda removed some branches when Melissa wasn't looking.
Then the second car approached.
A local contractor using the access road.
All three panicked.
They left.
The storm intensified before anyone returned.
“So you drove away.”
“Yes.”
“Then stood in Sarah's yard the next morning pretending Emma was still missing.”
Linda cried harder.
“I wanted to go look.”
“But you didn't.”
“Wade said police were everywhere.”
“You chose yourself.”
Linda whispered, “Yes.”
That single admission felt more truthful than anything she had said.
Ortiz moved to Daniel.
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
“Melissa called Sarah from his phone.”
“She doesn't need Wade anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because she has access to the offshore accounts.”
“What accounts?”
“The money Wade stole before he met Daniel.”
Robert's records apparently contained credentials tied to an old trust where Wade had hidden millions from earlier schemes.
Melissa had discovered the existence of the trust.
She needed Daniel only because Robert's notes contained coded clues.
Once Daniel decoded them, he became disposable.
“Has he decoded them?”
Linda looked terrified.
“If they found the right page.”
“What page?”
“The one Wade tore from Robert's notebook.”
Sarah entered the room.
“Where is it?”
Linda looked at her.
“Wade kept it in his wallet for twenty years.”
“And what does it say?”
“I never saw all of it.”
“Linda.”
“One phrase.”
“What phrase?”
Linda swallowed.
“Where the river bends twice.”
Sarah immediately thought of Cedar Hollow Farm.
A creek curved through the property.
Twice.
Ortiz was already opening maps.
There were two bends behind the far pasture.
At the second stood an old stone pump house.
Police had searched the farmhouse and barns.
Not the pump house.
Sarah's phone buzzed.
A text from Daniel.
No words.
Just a photograph.
A concrete floor.
A pair of men's shoes.
And in the corner, almost outside the frame, the red sole of a woman's heel.
Daniel had taken the photograph secretly.
Sarah enlarged it.
On the wall behind Melissa was an old rusted sign.
PUMP CONTROL.
May you like
She looked at Ortiz.
“They're still at Cedar Hollow.”
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