Chapter 8 - REBECCA'S CONFESSION
Claire did not move toward the car.
Rebecca gripped the steering wheel.
"Claire, please."
Behind them, someone kicked through an interior door.
Lena looked from Rebecca to the alley.
"We do not have time for a reunion."
Brennan opened the rear door of Rebecca's car.
"Everyone in."
Nora stared at him.
"You trust her?"
"No."
He looked toward the clinic.
"I trust the people behind us less."
They piled into the vehicle.
Rebecca accelerated before the doors were fully closed.
A man appeared at the mouth of the alley.
He raised his phone and took a photograph of the license plate.
Rebecca turned hard onto a side street.
Claire sat beside her in the front.
She did not hug her.
She did not ask about the blood.
She asked one question.
"Did you know I was going to be put in that coffin?"
Rebecca's eyes filled.
"No."
"Did you know Richard was planning my funeral before he drugged me?"
Rebecca hesitated.
That hesitation was enough.
Claire's voice became cold.
"Answer me."
"Yes."
Ethan felt Claire's hand tighten around the dashboard.
"How long?"
"Two days."
"And you said nothing."
"I was trying to figure out who was involved."
"You could have called me."
"They were watching your phone."
"You could have come to the house."
"Collins had a car outside."
"You could have taken Ethan."
Rebecca looked into the rearview mirror at him.
"I tried."
Ethan frowned.
"When?"
"Thursday afternoon."
She looked back at the road.
"I went to your school."
"I was already gone."
Ethan remembered Richard picking him up early.
Richard said Claire had a migraine and needed quiet at home.
Instead of taking Ethan home, Richard drove him to a hotel owned by one of his business associates.
Ethan spent Thursday night there with a babysitter he had never met.
Friday morning, Richard told him Claire had died overnight.
Ethan had been too shocked to ask why he had not been allowed to see her.
Rebecca continued.
"Richard signed you out forty minutes before I arrived."
Claire turned toward her.
"Why did you know there would be a funeral?"
Rebecca swallowed.
"Because Victor asked me to draft the company statement announcing your death."
"On Wednesday?"
"Yes."
"Before I was drugged."
"Yes."
Claire laughed once, bitterly.
"And you still did not call me."
Rebecca's voice broke.
"I thought it was a contingency draft."
"For a healthy forty-year-old woman?"
"Victor said there had been a threat."
"What threat?"
"He said you had received a medical diagnosis and the family wanted communications prepared."
Claire stared at her.
"You believed that?"
"For about twenty minutes."
Rebecca wiped tears from her face.
"Then I checked the metadata on the document he sent."
"What did you find?"
"The statement had been created six months earlier."
Everyone in the car went quiet.
Rebecca continued.
"That was when I started searching Victor's shared folders."
"And?"
"I found a funeral budget."
Claire's face tightened.
"A budget."
"Flowers, chapel, transportation, private security, burial plot, media notice."
Rebecca swallowed.
"Your entire funeral had been planned before Christmas."
Ethan felt sick.
He pictured the white flowers.
The bright chapel.
The printed programs.
The soft music.
Every detail that had seemed like grief had actually been procurement.
Claire spoke quietly.
"Why is there blood in your apartment?"
Rebecca touched her side.
Only then did Ethan see the dark stain beneath her jacket.
"Victor sent someone to get my laptop."
Lena leaned forward.
"Who?"
"A man named Caleb Ross."
Brennan reacted.
"Former deputy."
"You know him?"
"Collins fired him publicly three years ago."
Mara understood immediately.
"Publicly."
Brennan nodded.
"There were rumors Ross still did off-book work for him."
Rebecca described hearing her condominium door unlock shortly after sunrise.
She had been in the shower.
The intruder searched her office first.
Rebecca tried to leave through the kitchen.
Ross grabbed her.
She struck him with a glass pitcher and cut her side when both of them crashed into the counter.
She escaped with a spare car key.
"Why come here?" Nora asked.
Rebecca looked at Brennan.
"Because Hal sent me the address."
The car went silent.
Everyone turned toward Brennan.
He looked stunned.
"I did not."
Rebecca reached into her pocket and handed Lena a phone.
The message was there.
COME TO THE OLD VET CLINIC. CLAIRE IS SAFE. - HAL
Brennan's number appeared at the top.
He checked his own phone.
"That did not come from me."
Mara looked at him.
"Spoofed number."
Lena's expression hardened.
"Someone wanted Rebecca at the clinic at the same time as us."
Rebecca looked frightened now.
"Why?"
Ethan answered.
"So we would think you betrayed us."
Claire looked at him.
He continued.
"The tracker brought Collins's people there."
"The fake message brought Rebecca."
"If they caught us together, it would look like she led them to us."
Mara stared at Ethan.
"You are twelve in a very inconvenient way."
He did not know whether that was a compliment.
Rebecca drove them to an old boathouse owned by her late father.
It sat on a narrow lake road thirty miles from the city.
The building had no internet connection and no visible neighbors.
Lena did not like it.
Brennan liked it even less.
But Claire was losing strength, and Rebecca needed medical attention.
Nora cleaned Rebecca's cut while Mara and Lena copied the hidden flash drive onto three separate offline devices.
Brennan paced near the window.
Ethan sat beside Claire on an old sofa.
"Are you okay?"
She looked at him.
"No."
He appreciated the answer.
Adults had spent days pretending terrible things were fine.
Claire squeezed his hand.
"But I am here."
"Because I broke the coffin."
"Because you listened."
She touched his hair.
"That matters more."
Across the room, Mara called them over.
She had recovered another video from Evelyn's drive.
The file was labeled THOMAS BELL.
The recording showed Evelyn and her accountant speaking in the same library.
Thomas looked nervous.
"Victor is moving money through medical expense accounts."
Evelyn asked why.
Thomas answered.
"I think he is paying people to certify deaths."
Claire stared at the screen.
Thomas continued.
"Not fake people."
"Real clients."
"People whose estates become easier to control after they are gone."
Evelyn's face hardened.
"Are you saying Victor is killing them?"
Thomas shook his head.
"I am saying I do not know what happens between the last time they are seen alive and the moment Dr. Voss signs the certificate."
The recording ended.
Mara whispered.
"Thomas died from a cardiac event three months later."
Claire looked at the list of names again.
Six funeral home payments.
Six wealthy estates.
Six certificates signed by the same doctor.
"How many were cremated?" she asked.
Mara searched.
Five.
The sixth had been buried in a private family cemetery.
That person was Thomas Bell.
Ethan looked at Claire.
"Can they check?"
No one wanted to answer.
Lena finally said they could request an exhumation order, but that would take legal authority and evidence.
Nora looked at Evelyn's recording.
"We have evidence."
Brennan shook his head.
"We have suspicion."
Claire stood.
"Then we get proof."
"How?"
Claire looked at Rebecca.
"You said Victor's shared folders had a funeral budget."
Rebecca nodded.
"And more."
"What more?"
Rebecca took a deep breath.
"A folder called Continuity."
Mara frowned.
"What was in it?"
"Photographs of six people."
"The six dead clients?"
"Yes."
Rebecca looked at Claire.
"And a seventh photograph."
Claire already knew.
"Mine."
Rebecca nodded.
Then she looked at Ethan.
"And an eighth."
Claire's face changed.
"Whose?"
At the boathouse, Rebecca showed Claire the scar on her forearm from the condominium struggle.
"I should have called you Wednesday night."
Claire did not disagree.
Rebecca continued.
"I kept thinking I needed one more piece before I frightened you."
Claire looked at her.
"That is what everyone says after withholding the piece that mattered."
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
Ethan pretended not to listen.
He heard everything.
The argument changed something between the women.
Not because Claire stopped caring about Rebecca.
Because caring was no longer enough to create trust.
Trust would have to be rebuilt from facts, not history.
Before either woman could say more, Mara found the Thomas Bell recording and called them across the room.
May you like
Rebecca could barely say it.
"Ethan's."
