Chapter 2 - The Key Beneath the Stone
Blake left Abigail in the care of a hospital team whose names he checked himself.
He asked the hospital to remove public location information from her chart and arrange a private room with controlled access.
Darlene resisted his plan to visit the cemetery alone.
“Whoever stole that key expects you to follow.”
“Then we make them think I'm following without a plan.”
Naomi called a detective assigned to Julian's case and explained the threatening messages.
The detective agreed to meet them at the cemetery instead of sending an unmarked car directly to the hospital.
Sarah's grave stood beneath a cedar tree, its soil recently disturbed.
Blake crouched beside the headstone and brushed dirt from the edge.
Three years ago, after Sarah's funeral, he'd put the brass key inside a waterproof tube and hidden it under a flat river stone.
He had never asked why his wife wanted it kept there.
She was dying, terrified, and asking for one last promise.
He had promised because there were no other words left.
Now the river stone was broken.
Darlene stood beside him while the detective photographed a small shoe print in the mud.
“This isn't from last night,” the detective said.
“Rain softened the ground only this afternoon.”
Someone had come hours after Julian's arrest.
Blake noticed an impression beside the missing tube.
It resembled the corner of a metal box.
“Sarah said the key was for an old deposit drawer,” he remembered.
“Where?”
“Mercer Trust, downtown.”
Darlene frowned.
“Julian's first acquisition was Mercer Trust's corporate lending division.”
The detective called for a search of the branch's access logs.
While they waited, Blake received a text from an unknown number.
YOU BROUGHT THE IRON QUEEN TO A GRAVE.
DO YOU THINK SHE WILL MOURN YOU WHEN YOUR DAUGHTER IS NEXT?
Darlene read it, then quietly asked Naomi to preserve the message.
Blake's voice was frighteningly calm.
“Sarah told me she was afraid of something at the hospital.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought she was exhausted.”
The confession felt like a blade.
He had been raising a newborn and watching his wife deteriorate from complications after surgery.
He had believed the doctors who called Sarah's worries confusion.
Darlene did not offer him false comfort.
“Then we find out what she was trying to tell you.”
At the bank the following morning, the manager confirmed that a deposit drawer registered to Sarah Reed had been accessed at 6:14 p.m. the previous day.
The log listed a single authorized visitor.
Blake leaned over the counter to read it.
The visitor's name was Sarah Reed.
May you like
His wife had been dead for six years.
