Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN WHO STEPPED OFF THE PRIVATE JET
I watched my mother walk down the aircraft stairs three times.
Then a fourth.
I kept expecting the image to become someone else.
It didn’t.
Rebecca Mitchell was alive.
And Charles Whitmore had brought her back.
I called Detective Bennett.
“Is she being held?”
“We don’t know.”
“Can you get her?”
“We’re working on it.”
Those words weren’t enough.
I wanted to run to Teterboro.
Vincent stopped me with one sentence.
“Grace, what if Charles wants exactly that?”
I turned.
“You don’t get to tell me not to find my mother.”
“I’m not.”
He surprised me.
“I’m asking you not to walk into a trap without knowing what it is.”
I hated that he was right.
So I waited.
Three hours later, Rebecca Mitchell entered a police interview room.
I stood behind the observation glass.
My hands shook so badly Vincent quietly placed a chair behind me.
He didn’t touch me.
I appreciated that.
Mom looked older.
Thin.
But alive.
Detective Bennett asked whether she was safe.
“Yes.”
“Did Charles Whitmore force you onto the aircraft?”
“No.”
I stared.
Then why?
Rebecca explained that she had lived under an assumed identity in Switzerland for years.
Charles found her six weeks earlier.
But instead of harming her, he offered a deal.
Come back.
Help recover the missing ledger.
Or he would go after me.
Again.
So Mom came.
I pressed my hand against the glass.
The same story.
Always me.
Always people deciding what I should know “for my protection.”
When I finally entered the room, she looked up.
Her face crumpled.
“Grace.”
I stopped.
Eleven years of grief stood between us.
Then I whispered:
“Mom?”
She started crying.
I crossed the room.
We held each other.
For several minutes, I was fourteen again.
Then anger returned.
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
“You let me think I was alone.”
“I know.”
“You watched me join Aurelia?”
Her face changed.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t stop me?”
“I tried.”
“How?”
“Celeste.”
I froze.
“Celeste was watching me for you?”
Mom nodded.
“She promised to protect you.”
Tears filled my eyes.
Then Rebecca told us the real reason Charles targeted me.
The final Whitmore ledger was not hidden in a bank.
Or Switzerland.
Or a storage locker.
It had been encoded into something I carried during every circus performance.
My custom aerial silks.
I stared.
“What?”
Celeste had stitched a microscopic data strip into the reinforced seam of my performance fabric.
After my accident, the silks disappeared.
Everyone believed they were destroyed.
They weren’t.
Then Vincent’s face changed.
“Grace.”
“What?”
“The silks at my engagement party.”
My blood turned cold.
Golden aerial fabric.
Hung beneath the chandelier.
Vanessa had specifically chosen them.
Rebecca whispered:
“She found your old equipment.”
I stopped breathing.
The ledger had been hanging above us the entire night.
And when I performed Vanessa’s deadly challenge, I had unknowingly carried the evidence Charles Whitmore had spent years trying to find.
Then Vincent’s security chief called.
May you like
The engagement silks were gone.
Someone had stolen them from the mansion.
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