Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO PUT THE NOTE IN MY DAUGHTER’S BOOK
Lydia stood in the mudroom holding a kitchen knife.
Not at us.
At herself.
That stopped everyone.
Evelyn pulled Sadie upstairs.
Good.
I remained ten feet away.
“Put it down.”
Lydia’s hands shook.
“You’ll kill me.”
“No.”
“You should.”
“No.”
Jonah moved toward her.
I raised one hand.
Stop.
Lydia stared at me.
“I put the note in her backpack.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know what Dad planned.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That Sadie needed to meet you before Evelyn moved her out of state.”
My stomach turned.
“You believed that?”
“At first.”
“Why secretly?”
“Because he said Evelyn would refuse.”
Lydia began crying.
“He told me to put the note in Sadie’s book. Then he wanted me to text him when she left.”
“And?”
“I did.”
Evelyn appeared at the hallway entrance.
“Then what?”
Lydia looked at her.
“My father said he would pick Sadie up before she reached the main road.”
Evelyn’s face became ice.
“You helped lure my daughter out of her school.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he pick her up?”
Lydia looked at me.
“Because Caleb got there first.”
Grant had not expected me to stop so soon.
He had planned to take Sadie.
Where?
Lydia did not know.
“What changed?” I asked.
“Dad called afterward.”
She wiped her face.
“He was furious. He said the ledger might be with Sadie.”
The wooden horse.
Grant believed the child carried it.
“So you came here.”
“Yes.”
“To search?”
“Yes.”
“Then why the knife?”
She laughed brokenly.
“Because Dad told me if I failed again, I was finished.”
There it was.
Grant used his own daughter exactly the way Thomas had used him.
Family as leverage.
Lydia placed the knife on the floor.
Jonah kicked it away.
I asked:
“Where is Grant?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
She handed over her phone.
A message from Grant:
BRING THE HORSE TO BOURBON WAREHOUSE 6 BY MIDNIGHT.
COME ALONE.
Lydia whispered:
“He thinks I have it.”
Evelyn looked at me.
“No.”
I had not spoken yet.
“No what?”
“You are not going to play gangster with my daughter inside this house.”
Fair.
“I wasn’t planning to bring Sadie.”
“You’re not using Lydia as bait either.”
Lydia blinked.
Evelyn looked at her.
“You did something terrible.”
“Yes.”
“That does not mean your father gets to kill you.”
Lydia began sobbing.
I suddenly remembered why I loved Evelyn.
Not because she was soft.
Because her morality never depended on whether she liked someone.
Federal law enforcement was not my normal solution.
That night, it became one.
Jonah knew an investigator who had spent years building a case against Mercer businesses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Sloan arrived at Ashbourne at 10:40 p.m.
She looked at me like she had been waiting a decade.
“You finally ready to talk?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
I thought about Sadie upstairs.
“Yes.”
Rebecca did not smile.
“Good.”
A controlled operation was arranged at Warehouse 6.
Lydia would not go inside.
The wooden horse would not go either.
Grant arrived at 12:13 a.m.
But he came with someone else.
Elizabeth Whitaker.
May you like
Evelyn’s supposedly dead mother.
Grant had found her first.
