Chapter 4 - THE PRICE OF SILENCE
Grant searched the house room by room.
The nursery was empty. Claire's suitcase remained beside the guest-room closet. Her phone lay beneath the kitchen table, its screen cracked.
There were no signs of a struggle.
That frightened him more than broken furniture would have.
He called the police, then his security director, Elena Brooks, who had worked with him for eleven years.
“Pull every camera in the neighborhood,” he ordered. “I want every vehicle that passed this house in the last hour.”
Elena arrived within fifteen minutes.
She examined the note and frowned.
“Someone knew exactly when she'd be alone.”
Grant looked at her.
“Who had the schedule?”
“Your staff. Your office. Anyone with access to the shared calendar.”
“Start with everyone.”
The footage revealed a dark blue sedan leaving the property at 8:17 a.m. The plate had been stolen. A second camera captured the driver turning toward a private medical clinic outside Stamford.
Grant recognized the location.
It was where Paige had once claimed to be attending a corporate meeting.
He drove there with Elena.
The clinic receptionist denied knowing Claire, but a nurse quietly approached them after recognizing Grant from the news.
“A woman matching your wife's description was brought in this morning,” she said. “She wasn't admitted. She asked us to call a number, then left with someone who claimed to be her sister.”
“Did you see the woman?”
The nurse hesitated.
“Yes. She was wearing a dark coat. She seemed frightened.”
“Was she hurt?”
“I couldn't tell.”
Elena checked the visitor records.
The person who had signed Claire out used the name Emily Rowan.
Paige's sister.
Grant had never heard Paige mention a sister.
That evening, Claire woke in a locked room with a blanket draped over her legs. Her head ached, but she could feel the baby moving.
A woman sat across from her.
Paige.
“You're awake,” Paige said.
Claire pushed herself upright.
“Where am I?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“You kidnapped me.”
Paige looked away.
“I didn't have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice. You chose to sleep with my husband. You chose to steal from his company. What did you choose this time?”
Paige's expression cracked.
“I didn't steal the money.”
“Then why are you hiding?”
“Because the person who did will kill both of us if we tell the truth.”
Claire stared at her.
“Who?”
Paige stood and walked to the door.
Before leaving, she turned back.
“Your father wasn't the man you think he was.”
Claire went cold.
“My father is dead.”
“That's what everyone told you.”
Paige opened the door.
May you like
And for the first time, Claire understood that her marriage might have been only one piece of a much older deception.
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