Chapter 6 - CLARE HAD NOT COME TO THE ESTATE BY ACCIDENT
Clare felt physically sick.
The agency job.
The unusually high wages.
The health insurance.
The flexible arrangement allowing Ellie to stay in the staff day room when childcare failed.
She thought she had finally gotten lucky after years of surviving.
Arthur had engineered it.
Why?
Dominic’s investigators reconstructed the hiring path.
The Vale estate used a staffing agency.
Arthur had referred Clare’s résumé through a charitable employment program.
He marked her:
PRIORITY PLACEMENT.
Then ensured background screening omitted her connection to Halcyon.
Vincent looked furious.
“He placed a woman whose husband challenged him inside your home.”
“Why?”
Dominic already suspected the answer.
Monitoring.
If Clare discovered anything Aaron left behind, Arthur wanted her nearby.
Where her mail, contacts, and behavior were easier to observe.
But that still did not explain Ellie.
Arthur could not have predicted a four-year-old would touch Dominic’s brace.
That was the flaw.
Complex plans often fail because reality refuses to respect adults’ assumptions about children.
Then estate camera archives produced another surprise.
Three weeks earlier, Ellie had wandered into the rehabilitation room looking for her latch toy.
Martin Sloane was there alone.
He had Dominic’s brace on a workbench.
Ellie stood in the doorway.
Sloane noticed her.
Then turned his body to block the brace.
“Out.”
Ellie fled.
No one had known.
But she remembered the buckle.
That was why she said:
“It was outside.”
She had seen Sloane remove and re-thread the strap.
Maybe not understood.
But remembered.
Then Dominic asked Ellie gently:
“Did the man say anything else?”
Clare immediately tensed.
Dominic slowed.
“You don’t have to answer.”
Ellie looked at her mother.
Clare nodded.
“He said I break things.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Then:
“He said Mommy breaks things too.”
Clare went pale.
Sloane knew who Ellie’s mother was.
Another connection.
Then Vincent received a location alert.
Martin Sloane had not flown from O’Hare.
His passport was never scanned.
His car at the airport was misdirection.
Traffic-camera records placed him in Indiana six hours later.
Heading toward a rural property owned by—
Arthur Voss.
Dominic stared.
“Get authorities involved.”
Vincent nodded.
Dominic did not want a private disappearance.
Too many people in his world solved problems by making them vanish.
Not this one.
Evidence had to survive.
Then Dr. Mercer called with the most important medical update yet.
The metallic fragment near Dominic’s knee could be removed.
Nerve damage appeared treatable.
The decline might not be permanent.
Dominic closed his eyes.
For eleven weeks, Arthur had told him his body was failing.
Now there was hope.
Then Lena added:
“There’s something you need to know about the original crash.”
“What?”
She had reviewed Dominic’s emergency records.
His left knee injury was consistent with the collision.
But the post-crash toxicology contained a sedative-level abnormality that had been dismissed because of medications given by paramedics.
Lena compared timestamps.
Part of the substance appeared to have been in his bloodstream before EMS treatment.
Dominic opened his eyes.
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The brace may not have been the first attempt to weaken him.
Someone may have impaired him before his car ever entered Lower Wacker Drive.
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