Chapter 13 - THE PRICE OF BETRAYAL
Samuel Price agreed to cooperate in exchange for protection.
He was transported to a federal interview room.
Ryan and Maya watched through one-way glass.
Price looked smaller without his tailored suit.
His shoulders sagged.
His hands trembled around a paper cup.
Detective Torres sat across from him.
“Where is Evelyn Whitmore?”
“She changes locations every twelve hours.”
“Who is helping her?”
“Former company security staff.”
“Names.”
Price provided six.
Torres wrote them down.
“Why did you help her?”
Price stared at the table.
“At first, it was legal work.”
“Estate planning.”
“Confidentiality agreements.”
“Then Charles discovered the money Marcus had stolen.”
“Evelyn asked me to prepare incapacity documents.”
“You forged them.”
“Yes.”
“You helped isolate a sick man.”
“Yes.”
“You helped alter his will.”
Price hesitated.
“Yes.”
Ryan stepped closer to the glass.
Price continued.
“Charles created Oliver’s trust after he realized the will had been compromised.”
“He hid the documents through an outside firm.”
“Evelyn discovered the trust last year.”
“That was when she began studying Maya.”
Maya’s face hardened.
“She studied me?”
“She hired investigators.”
“She obtained medical records.”
“She tracked your travel.”
“She collected photographs.”
“She needed material that could be rearranged into a psychiatric narrative.”
Ryan wanted to enter the room and drag Price across the table.
Maya gripped his wrist.
“Keep listening.”
Torres leaned forward.
“What was supposed to happen the night Oliver was attacked?”
Price swallowed.
“Evelyn planned to provoke Maya.”
“The camera would capture Maya fighting with her.”
“Then the inhaler would disappear.”
“Oliver would struggle to breathe.”
“Maya would panic.”
“When Ryan arrived, Evelyn would claim Maya caused the emergency.”
“And the transport order?”
“Maya would be taken to Briarwood.”
“How long?”
“Long enough for an emergency custody hearing.”
Maya’s fingers tightened around Ryan’s wrist.
“What about Oliver?”
Price looked toward the one-way glass as though he knew she was behind it.
“Evelyn believed he would recover quickly.”
Ryan slammed his palm against the glass.
Price flinched.
Torres did not look away.
“And if he did not recover?”
Price’s eyes filled with shame.
“She said the loss would prove Maya was unfit.”
Maya made a sound that Ryan had never heard before.
Not a sob.
Not a scream.
Something lower.
Something broken.
Price continued.
“I told her it was too dangerous.”
“She said Charles had survived worse.”
Torres stopped writing.
“What did she mean?”
Price covered his face.
“She had used withheld medication before.”
“On Charles.”
“To create medical crises.”
“She said people reveal their weaknesses when someone they love cannot breathe.”
Ryan stepped away from the glass.
The sentence echoed in his mind.
His mother had not improvised.
She had repeated a method.
First on her husband.
Then on her grandson.
Detective Torres asked the final question.
“Where is she now?”
Price lowered his hands.
“At the Whitmore lake house.”
“But she is not alone.”
“She has Oliver’s former nanny with her.”
Maya stared at the glass.
Oliver’s former nanny had disappeared eight months earlier.
May you like
Evelyn had claimed the woman stole jewelry.
No one had heard from her since.
