Chapter 17 - THE MAN WHO FOLLOWED MAISIE
We changed everything.
New security.
New preschool procedures.
New phones.
No public schedule.
No pictures of Maisie online.
Derek and I met with the school together.
For once, there was no argument.
“We use two-person verification now,” the director explained.
Derek nodded. “Good.”
“And nobody outside the approved list receives information.”
“Good.”
I looked at him.
He looked exhausted.
“You okay?”
“No.”
Honest again.
“I keep thinking about the seventeen calls.”
I stiffened.
“What about them?”
“If I had answered…”
“This is not about that.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t make it about your guilt.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
God, therapy was annoying.
We walked outside.
A black SUV sat across the street.
Derek noticed it first.
“Get back inside.”
“What?”
“Now.”
The SUV pulled away.
Security captured the plate.
Stolen.
That afternoon police found it abandoned.
Inside was a photograph of Maisie leaving the playground with Derek.
On the photograph someone had drawn a red circle around her.
Derek vomited in the police station bathroom.
I sat outside listening.
When he emerged, his face was gray.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for being sick.”
“I’m not apologizing for that.”
He sat beside me.
“I brought this into her life.”
“We don’t know that.”
“My mother. Richard. Sabrina. Veronica. Every road leads through my family.”
“Some lead through mine.”
He looked at me.
“This started before we married.”
Exactly.
That was what frightened me.
The next breakthrough came from Claire.
She had spent two days reviewing the parcel map surrounding the Samuel Vance Community Project.
“Audrey.”
“What?”
“These purchases form a ring.”
I looked.
She was right.
Meridian-controlled companies had acquired five parcels.
Not random parcels.
Access roads.
Utility easements.
Drainage corridors.
“If they control these…”
“They can delay Phase Two,” Claire said.
“For years.”
“Or force Vance Capital to buy them at a premium.”
It was corporate extortion disguised as land speculation.
Dad would have hated it.
Then Claire clicked another document.
“The oldest parcel was purchased eighteen months ago.”
Before Harbor Point returned.
Before the anonymous envelope.
Before anyone supposedly cared about me.
“Who sold it?”
Claire’s face changed.
“What?”
She turned the screen.
Seller:
DEREK WHITMORE.
My heart dropped.
Derek had owned the land.
And never told me.
I called him.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Third call.
Nothing.
By the fifth, my hands were shaking.
Not because I was in labor.
Not because I needed my husband.
Because I had learned that sometimes history did not repeat itself exactly.
Sometimes it simply knew where to press.
Six calls.
Seven.
Eight.
Then a text arrived.
Not from Derek.
From his phone.
STOP CALLING.
A photograph followed.
Derek sat in a chair inside what looked like an empty warehouse.
Blood ran from his eyebrow.
Someone stood behind him.
The face was outside the frame.
May you like
The message beneath it contained three words.
VOTE FOR HARBOR.
