Chapter 12 - Ashley Took the Money and Left Him
The charter jet landed in Vancouver two hours after leaving Colorado.
Canadian authorities were waiting.
They boarded the aircraft before the cabin door fully opened.
Ashley Monroe was in seat 4A wearing dark glasses and holding a glass of champagne.
Michael was not on the plane.
Neither was Trent.
Ashley had taken one suitcase, a laptop, two passports, and nearly every dollar remaining in Northstar Meridian Holdings.
She had abandoned the man she helped murder me for.
Or tried to.
When officers told her she was being detained pending an international fraud and attempted-murder investigation, Ashley did not ask for Michael.
She asked for a lawyer.
Then she asked whether the eleven-million-dollar transfer had cleared.
That detail told Rachel everything about her priorities.
The transfer was frozen before reaching Zurich.
Ashley had left the country with less than five thousand dollars in cash.
Michael had lost his mistress and his stolen money in the same afternoon.
I should have enjoyed that.
Instead, I was staring at the empty place on the map where Michael should have been.
He was still somewhere in Colorado.
And unlike Ashley, he knew I was alive.
"The plane was a decoy," Luke said.
"He wanted us looking north while he moved somewhere else."
Rachel nodded.
"Or Ashley wanted him looking north too."
That possibility mattered.
Ashley had stolen almost the entire offshore balance before boarding.
If Michael expected access to the money, she had betrayed him.
If she had betrayed him, he might be hunting her as aggressively as we were.
Rebecca received a call from Canadian counsel shortly after midnight.
Ashley wanted to negotiate.
Not through Curtis Vale.
Through an independent attorney.
"She says she has evidence," Rebecca told us.
"Of what?"
"Michael planning the cliff."
The room became silent.
Rachel's expression did not change.
"She already participated."
"Her evidence doesn't erase that."
"She knows."
Rebecca read from her notes.
"She wants protection from Michael, consideration on conspiracy charges, and immunity for certain financial offenses."
I laughed bitterly.
"She watched him push me and wants a discount."
Rebecca did not disagree.
"She may still have something we need."
I looked at Noah sleeping beside the couch.
"Ask what."
The answer came an hour later.
A recording.
Not the mountain camera.
Not the watch.
A recording Ashley made herself.
According to her attorney, Ashley began secretly recording Michael six weeks before the cliff because she no longer trusted him to keep his promises.
Michael had promised to marry her after my death.
He had promised her ten million dollars.
He had promised control of a charitable foundation they could use to move money.
Ashley believed promises only when she could threaten someone with proof.
That instinct may have saved the case.
She sent a thirty-second sample through her attorney.
Rachel authenticated enough metadata to justify listening.
Michael's voice came first.
"The stairs failed because she caught the railing."
Ashley's voice followed.
"And the baby?"
"Fine."
"Then what now?"
A chair creaked.
Michael answered calmly.
"We make the next one impossible to survive."
My skin went numb.
Ashley asked where.
Michael said one word.
"Mountain."
The sample ended.
I stared at the speaker.
There it was.
Not inference.
Not a lip-reading enhancement.
Not a pattern stitched together from separate crimes.
His voice.
The stairs failed.
The next one impossible to survive.
Rachel stood.
"Tell Canada we want the entire device, not a copy."
"And tell Ashley there is no immunity promise from me."
"She can cooperate and prosecutors can consider it."
"That's all."
Ashley did not like that answer.
She sent another sample anyway.
This one was recorded two days before the cliff.
Michael sounded irritated.
"Nolan says the storm gives us ninety minutes before rescue can work the west ravine."
Ashley asked, "What if she lands on something?"
Michael laughed.
"Nine months pregnant?"
"In that cold?"
"She won't last."
Ashley was quiet.
Then she asked the question that destroyed any possibility she had been an innocent observer.
"What if the baby comes out alive?"
Michael replied without hesitation.
"Then he dies with her."
Ashley said nothing.
She did not object.
She did not leave.
Two days later, she stood behind the trees while he pushed me.
I turned away from the speaker.
"I don't want to hear more tonight."
Rachel nodded.
No one argued.
But the night was not finished with us.
At 1:43 a.m., a motion sensor triggered outside the safe property.
This location was a rural house owned by a state agency through a holding company.
There were no nearby neighbors.
No public address linked to my name.
A camera showed movement near the tree line.
One person.
Dark clothing.
Face covered.
Luke was awake before the security officer reached the hallway.
He moved me and Noah into an interior room with reinforced walls.
"Stay here."
"Is it Michael?"
"I don't know."
He locked the door from outside.
I heard quiet commands through the wall.
Then a sharp crack.
A gunshot.
Noah woke screaming.
I dropped to the floor beside the crib and covered him with my body even though the room was designed to withstand gunfire.
Another shot sounded outside.
Then silence.
The silence lasted longer than the noise.
Rachel's voice finally came through the secure intercom.
"Emma, stay where you are."
"Is Luke okay?"
No answer.
"Rachel, is Luke okay?"
"Stay where you are."
My heart hammered.
Ten minutes later, the door opened.
Rachel entered first.
There was blood on her sleeve.
"Whose blood?"
"Not mine."
"Luke?"
"He's alive."
I nearly collapsed.
The intruder had fired once toward a security light and once at Luke when Luke moved behind a vehicle.
The bullet grazed Luke's upper arm.
Security officers returned fire.
The intruder escaped through the trees but left blood on a fence post.
He had been hit.
Investigators found a rifle magazine, a burner phone, and a small GPS receiver in the snow.
The receiver displayed coordinates.
Our coordinates.
Someone had not guessed where the safe house was.
Someone had tracked us.
Rachel immediately ordered every vehicle searched.
The device was found under Luke's truck.
A magnetic GPS tracker had been attached behind the rear axle.
Surveillance footage from his apartment showed when it happened.
Two nights earlier, while Luke was inside for less than six minutes, a man in a maintenance jacket crouched behind the truck.
Officer Daniel Reeves.
The corrupt hospital security officer.
He had not vanished.
He had stayed close enough to follow the one person Michael knew had rescued me.
The blood from the fence returned a preliminary match by morning.
Daniel Reeves.
Rachel issued a statewide alert.
At 7:20 a.m., Reeves walked into a small emergency clinic forty miles away with a bullet wound to his thigh.
He used a fake name.
The nurse recognized his photograph from the alert.
Police arrested him before he could leave.
Reeves asked for a deal within thirty minutes.
His first sentence made Rachel stop the recorder and call me.
"Michael Carter isn't running."
"He's still in Denver."
Then Reeves gave an address.
It belonged to a luxury condominium rented under Curtis Vale's law firm.
Police surrounded it by nine.
They entered at nine twelve.
The condo was empty.
But breakfast was still warm on the counter.
A shower had recently been used.
A television was tuned to news coverage of my funeral.
And on the dining table sat a printed photograph of me holding Noah at the first safe house.
My face had been circled in red.
Beside it was another photograph.
Luke.
May you like
His face was crossed out.
