Chapter 9 - Amber’s Empty Apartment
Amber’s apartment door was unlocked.
Her purse was on the kitchen counter.
Her car was downstairs.
Her phone lay shattered beside the sofa.
But Amber was gone.
Police became involved immediately once Naomi explained the threats and financial-fraud investigation.
I stood outside while officers searched.
Every part of me felt split.
Amber had betrayed me.
She had helped Jason manipulate me.
She had slept with my husband on my wedding night.
But I didn't want her hurt.
Betrayal did not make kidnapping acceptable.
Jason paced the hallway.
“This is my fault.”
I looked at him.
“For once, I won't argue.”
He flinched.
Good.
An officer found blood on the bathroom sink.
Very little.
Possibly from a cut.
No sign of a violent struggle.
Then they found Amber's laptop missing.
Mercer wanted the recordings.
“What exactly did she copy?” Naomi asked.
Jason rubbed his face.
“Meetings with Mercer. Discussions about Rebecca, Laura, Rachel.”
“How many victims?”
“At least nine.”
“Did you participate in all nine?”
“No.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
Rebecca.
Me.
And one woman named Melissa Grant—not my attorney Melissa; another victim outside Phoenix.
Jason had been doing this for nearly a decade.
Any remaining part of me that wanted to believe our relationship had been different disappeared.
“You had opportunities to stop.”
“I know.”
“You watched what happened to Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“And then you did it again.”
“Yes.”
There was no excuse left.
Only facts.
That afternoon, police found Amber’s rental car forty miles away near a bus station.
Surveillance footage showed her getting out alone.
Alive.
She wasn't kidnapped.
She ran.
Why?
The answer arrived through an email scheduled to send to me at 6:00 p.m.
Rachel,
If you're reading this, I'm gone because Mercer will come for the recordings, and I don't trust Jason to protect anyone except himself.
I deserve your anger.
I deserve to lose you.
But I am trying to do one decent thing before this ends.
The recordings are not with me.
They're somewhere Jason will never think to look.
Somewhere that belonged to us before he entered either of our lives.
I read the message three times.
Somewhere belonging to Amber and me.
Elementary school?
Our childhood neighborhood?
The lake cabin her family used every summer?
Then I remembered something absurd.
A pink metal time capsule.
When we were thirteen, Amber and I buried a cheap lockbox beneath an oak tree behind her grandmother's old house.
We filled it with friendship bracelets, photographs, letters to our future selves, and a list of boys we swore we'd never marry.
Her grandmother died years later.
The property remained in the family but sat empty.
No one would think of it.
Except me.
Naomi insisted police accompany us.
We drove there after dark.
The oak tree still stood behind the detached garage.
The ground beneath it had been disturbed recently.
We dug.
The old pink box was there.
Inside were childhood photographs.
A friendship bracelet.
Two ridiculous letters written in purple ink.
And a modern waterproof pouch.
Three flash drives.
One envelope.
I opened it.
Rachel,
If Jason told you I was his first love, he lied.
He never loved me first.
He loved someone else.
And that woman is the reason Mercer owns him.
Inside was a photograph.
Jason was maybe twenty-two.
His arm around a blonde woman outside a hospital.
On the back:
JASON + CLAIRE, 2014.
I looked at Jason.
His face drained of color.
“Who is Claire?”
He whispered:
“My sister.”
I frowned.
“Your sister?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
May you like
Then he said the secret he'd hidden even from Amber.
“Claire was my wife.”
