Chapter 7 - THE GIRL THEY ERASED
I had despised Khloe from the day I saw her wearing my bracelet.
It was easier to imagine her as a cruel opportunist than a woman trapped inside the same machinery that had destroyed me.
Now I sat across from Ward, staring at an enlarged photograph of a frightened teenager named Eleanor Bell.
The shape of her smile matched Khloe's.
A tiny pale mark beside her right ear matched too.
“She is Eleanor,” Ward said.
“We have a preliminary fingerprint comparison.”
“How did Silas find her?”
“We think Margaret never lost her.”
Mara had reported her daughter's kidnapping and then stopped cooperating with police.
A week later, she submitted a false statement claiming Eleanor had run away.
The file was closed.
Ward suspected coercion, especially after financial transfers began appearing in Mara's accounts.
The woman had been paid to remain quiet while her daughter was controlled by the Thorne family.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“We're searching hospitals and private medical facilities.”
Harrison leaned forward.
“Why the trust?”
Ward explained that the Clara Thorne trust was designed to release substantial funds when a named beneficiary gave birth.
The beneficiary's identity had been amended repeatedly.
Silas seemed to be using a pregnancy to unlock assets that belonged to his first wife.
But one thing puzzled Ward.
“Clara signed the original trust two years after she supposedly vanished,” she said.
“Someone forged her signature.”
“Perhaps,” Ward replied.
“Or perhaps Clara was alive longer than Silas admitted.”
The possibility changed the meaning of the concrete.
Perhaps Clara had been imprisoned beneath the estate before she was killed.
Perhaps the ring had been buried to conceal a different crime.
The next morning an emergency hearing began on the restrictions placed upon my attorney communications.
Price's deputy produced a sworn statement that I had attempted to intimidate Khloe.
I demanded to see the statement.
It bore her signature and yesterday's date.
A recording of her pleading for help was already in federal custody.
Harrison stood.
“Your Honor, we can prove the witness was not free to make this declaration.”
The judge asked how.
Ward entered the courtroom through the rear doors.
“We recovered it from a printer on a property controlled by Silas Thorne,” she said.
“The printer also produced boarding documents for a medical evacuation flight leaving tonight.”
“What destination?” the judge asked.
Ward looked at me.
“Dubai.”
Then her phone vibrated.
May you like
The aircraft had already taken off, three hours before its filed departure.
