Chapter 2 - The Secret Beneath Her Father's Grave
The photograph had been taken three days earlier.
Rafe knew because the waterfront redevelopment sign behind the two men had been installed that Monday.
He enlarged the image until the pixels blurred.
Daniel Bennett.
Sloane's father.
The man whose funeral Rafe had attended four years before marrying her.
Alive.
Rafe called Malik.
"I need everything on Daniel Bennett's death. The accident report, insurance records, funeral arrangements. Everything."
"Boss, wasn't he buried in Connecticut?"
"That's what everyone believed."
Across Manhattan, Sloane sat inside a quiet apartment overlooking the East River.
Her best friend, June Parker, placed a mug of decaf tea beside her.
"You should sleep."
"I tried."
Sloane rested one hand against her stomach.
Their daughter had been restless all night.
June glanced toward the small suitcase beside the couch.
"Are you going to tell him where you are?"
"No."
"He'll worry."
Sloane gave a humorless laugh.
"He knows how to worry when something is missing. He just never noticed when I was standing right in front of him."
June didn't argue.
Three days earlier, Sloane had received an envelope containing photographs of her father.
At first, she'd assumed they were fabricated.
Then she'd recognized the silver watch on his wrist.
Her mother had given him that watch on their twentieth anniversary. The clasp was broken, and he'd repaired it with a narrow strip of copper wire.
The photograph showed the same repair.
The envelope had also contained a handwritten warning.
Your father didn't abandon you. Someone made sure you believed he was dead.
Sloane had spent the following two nights checking everything she could.
And yesterday, she had discovered a transfer from a shell company connected to Calder Maritime.
The payment had been made on the exact date her father supposedly drowned.
Two million dollars.
She'd gone to a lawyer because she no longer knew whom she could trust.
Not because she had stopped loving Rafe.
That was the cruelest part.
She still loved him enough to cry when she remembered the way he'd kissed her forehead before leaving.
Her phone vibrated.
A message arrived from an unfamiliar number.
Your father wants to meet you.
Attached was a short video.
An older man sat in a dimly lit room.
He looked directly into the camera.
"Sloane, sweetheart. If you're seeing this, please forgive me."
Her breath caught.
It was her father's voice.
May you like
Then he said something that made her blood run cold.
"Don't tell your husband. His father is the reason I disappeared."
