Chapter 17 - Linda's Last EscapeLinda had not escaped police custody.
Someone had released her.
That was worse.
Her attorney had arranged transportation after prosecutors approved a tightly controlled relocation to another interview site.
The transport order was fake.
It had been entered into the county system using valid credentials.
Two officers handed Linda to a woman presenting federal identification.
By the time anyone verified the order, Linda was gone.
Melissa had planned an exit route long before the pump-house confrontation.
“She has somebody inside law enforcement,” Sarah said.
Ortiz didn't disagree.
Wade, receiving treatment under armed guard, finally decided survival was more valuable than loyalty.
He talked.
Melissa Grant had been the architect of the modern scheme.
Wade had brought her into Daniel's company five years earlier through an executive recruiting firm.
Her job was simple.
Gain Daniel's trust.
Control finances.
Expand the old fraud.
Eventually acquire Miller Construction.
“But why?” Sarah asked.
Wade laughed painfully from his hospital bed.
“Because she hates the Millers.”
“Why?”
He looked toward Daniel.
“Ask who her mother was.”
Daniel frowned.
Wade answered for him.
“Claire Grant.”
The name meant nothing.
Then Ortiz searched historical records.
Claire Grant had worked as Robert Miller's administrative assistant twenty-three years earlier.
She had been questioned after Robert accused Wade of fraud.
Shortly afterward, Claire was fired.
She lost her home.
Declared bankruptcy.
Died from an overdose six years later.
Melissa had been eighteen when her mother died.
“She blamed my father?” Daniel asked.
Wade nodded.
“Robert accused Claire of helping me.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Then why blame him?”
“Because people prefer the version where their parents are innocent.”
Sarah thought of Daniel.
Of Linda.
The same pattern repeating.
Melissa entered Daniel's company not only for money.
She wanted to dismantle what Robert's son had built.
Wade found that useful.
Until Melissa decided she could keep everything herself.
“And Linda?” Sarah asked.
Wade smiled.
“Linda thinks Melissa is taking her somewhere safe.”
Sarah almost couldn't believe anyone could still manipulate Linda.
“After all this?”
“Linda believes whatever story helps her survive another hour.”
“Where are they going?”
Wade hesitated.
Ortiz reminded him of the attempted-murder charges surrounding Emma.
His face changed.
“Airport.”
“Which?”
“Not commercial.”
He named a private airstrip west of Nashville.
Police raced there.
Too late.
A chartered plane had departed nineteen minutes earlier.
Flight plan filed for Dallas.
The aircraft never reached Dallas.
Its transponder disappeared over Arkansas.
Sarah's stomach dropped.
“They can just vanish?”
“Not easily,” Ortiz said.
But not impossible.
Emma listened as adults tried to avoid telling her details.
She understood anyway.
“Grandma ran away?”
Sarah sat beside her.
“Yes.”
“With the lady?”
“Yes.”
“Does she still hate me?”
The question shattered Sarah.
“No.”
Emma looked unconvinced.
“Then why did she put dirt on me?”
There was no safe answer.
Sarah took her daughter's hand.
“Because sometimes adults can love someone and still make selfish, terrible choices that hurt them.”
“That's stupid.”
Sarah almost laughed.
“Yes.”
Emma touched her shaved hair.
“Will she go to jail?”
“If police find her.”
Emma thought about it.
Then whispered, “They will.”
“How do you know?”
“Grandma forgot something.”
Sarah leaned closer.
“What?”
“Her medicine.”
Linda took medication for high blood pressure.
Not especially useful.
Then Emma continued.
“She always says she can't fly without it because flying scares her.”
Sarah frowned.
“What medicine?”
“Not pills.”
Emma made a spraying gesture near her nose.
Sarah remembered.
Linda suffered severe panic attacks on airplanes and used a prescription nasal spray.
Her doctor was local.
Police checked pharmacy records.
Linda's prescription hadn't been filled recently.
But twenty-seven minutes after the plane vanished, a pharmacy in Little Rock received an electronic emergency request under Linda's name.
Pickup location?
A twenty-four-hour pharmacy outside Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Ortiz smiled for the first time in days.
“Emma may have just found her.”
State police surrounded the pharmacy.
Linda never appeared.
But surveillance captured Melissa entering alone.
She saw police.
Ran.
Officers arrested her behind the building.
No Linda.
Melissa refused to talk.
Sarah thought Linda might have gotten away again.
Then a call came from a roadside motel six miles away.
An older woman had walked into the lobby barefoot and asked the clerk to call police.
Linda.
When officers arrived, she didn't resist.
She carried one thing.
A black leather purse.
Inside was the missing page from Robert's notebook.
Melissa had taken it from Wade.
Linda had stolen it from Melissa while she slept.
For once, Linda's betrayal helped someone other than herself.
The page contained Robert's complete account of the night Wade confronted him.
Wade had threatened him.
But Robert wrote that another person had entered the room after Wade left.
Claire Grant.
Melissa's mother.
Robert wrote:
Claire brought me the medication Wade paid her to alter.
She says she cannot do it.
She wants immunity.
If anything happens to me, Wade will blame Claire.
The entry ended there.
Wade hadn't necessarily killed Robert.
Claire hadn't either.
Robert died naturally four days later.
Wade had spent twenty years terrified the page proved murder.
Melissa had spent years believing Robert destroyed her mother.
Both had built lives around a lie.
Sarah stared at the page.
All the violence.
All the money.
Emma beneath the earth.
Built around people protecting secrets that weren't even what they believed.
Daniel looked at his mother through the police-station glass after she was returned to Tennessee.
“She could've told me twenty years ago.”
Sarah squeezed his hand.
“Yes.”
He looked toward Linda.
“But then she would've had to admit what she'd done.”
And that, Sarah realized, had always been Linda's greatest fear.
Not Wade.
Not prison.
May you like
Not losing money.
The truth.
