Chapter 8
I woke up in the hospital.
My head throbbed. My left arm was in a cast. My ribs hurt so bad I could barely breathe.
Jake was sitting next to the bed, holding my hand. His face was pale, his eyes red. Mia was on the other side, talking to a police officer.
“Mom,” Jake said, squeezing my hand. “Thank God you’re awake. We were so scared.”
“What happened?” I whispered.
“Somebody ran you off the road,” he said. “The police think it was Earl Carter. They found his truck abandoned ten miles from the crash site. There was a knife and a roll of duct tape in the front seat. He was going to… he was going to take you.”
I closed my eyes. Patricia had tried to have me killed. Over money. Over pride. Over the fact that she’d never been as loved as Eleanor.
“Did they catch him?” I said.
“Not yet,” Mia said, walking over. “But the FBI is involved now. It’s a federal case—interstate flight, attempted murder, conspiracy. They’ll find him. He can’t hide forever.”
I stayed in the hospital for three days. When I got home, the house was like a fortress. Police cars patrolled the road 24/7. FBI agents were camped in the guest house. The security system had been upgraded to military grade.
Earl was everywhere and nowhere. The FBI traced him to a motel in Utah, then to a cabin in Wyoming, then to a bus station in Nevada. He was always one step ahead.
Patricia’s appeal was still pending. Every time we got close to Earl, she’d file another motion, another delay, trying to run out the clock.
We were exhausted. We couldn’t sleep. We couldn’t leave the house without an escort. The life we’d started to build was gone, replaced by fear.
Then, one morning, the phone rang.
It was Lila. She was crying so hard I could barely understand her.
“Claire,” she said. “My dad called me. He’s at the old cabin outside of town. The one my grandpa built. He’s hurt. He says he’s sorry. He says Patricia lied to him. She told him you’d kidnapped my baby, that you were going to sell her. He didn’t know the truth. Please. You have to help him. He’s going to kill himself.”
The FBI told us not to go. It was too dangerous. It could be a trap.
But I looked at Jake. I looked at Mia.
We’d been running long enough.
I told the FBI we were going. They agreed to follow us at a distance, to surround the cabin, to move in if anything went wrong.
We drove to the cabin. It was small, run-down, hidden in the woods. Smoke curled from the chimney.
I got out of the car alone. Jake and Mia stayed behind, the FBI agents hidden in the trees.
I walked to the door and knocked.
“Earl,” I said. “It’s Claire. Lila called me. I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
The door creaked open.
Earl Carter stood in the doorway. He was tall, thin, with a scar running down his cheek. He held a gun in his hand, but it was pointed at the floor. His other arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage.
“Come in,” he said, his voice rough.
I stepped inside. The cabin was cold, messy. Empty beer cans and food wrappers covered the table. On the couch, a photo of Lila and the baby.
He sat down, putting the gun on the table within my reach.
“Patricia told me you took my granddaughter,” he said. “Said you had her hidden in some basement. Said you were going to sell her to a rich couple in Europe. Said the courts were on your side, that no one would help me get her back.”
He looked up at me, his eyes wet.
“I lost Lila once,” he said. “I was in prison when she was a kid. I missed her first steps, her first day of school, everything. I wasn’t going to lose my granddaughter too. So I did what she said. I keyed the car. I messed up the office. I sent the letters. I ran you off the road.”
He paused, wincing in pain.
“When I got to your car,” he said, “I saw your wallet on the seat. Your ID. Your foundation card. The one that says you help kids. And then my phone rang. It was Lila. She was screaming at me, telling me the truth. Telling me Patricia was in prison for stealing, that she’d lied about everything. I looked at you lying there, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt a woman who spent her life helping kids. So I ran.”
He lifted his shirt. A bullet wound in his side. Fresh. Bleeding bad.
“Two days ago,” he said. “Patricia’s lawyer came to see me. He said I’d messed up, that I knew too much. He shot me. Said if I didn’t kill you in the next twenty-four hours, he’d kill Lila and the baby.”
He pushed the gun toward me.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone else,” he said. “I’m going to turn myself in. I’ll testify against Patricia. I’ll tell the court everything. Just… tell Lila I’m sorry. Tell her I love her. Tell her I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to her if she’ll let me.”
I looked at the gun. At the photo of Lila and the baby. At Earl, bleeding out on the couch.
I picked up the gun and put it in my purse.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell her. But first, we’re getting you to a hospital.”
I walked to the door and signaled the FBI. They swarmed the cabin, guns drawn, until they saw Earl was no threat. They called an ambulance, arrested him, and took him away.
As he was loaded into the ambulance, he looked at me.
“Thank you,” he said.
Earl’s testimony was the final nail in Patricia’s coffin.
He told the court everything—about the money, the threats, the orders to harass us, the attempted murder, the lawyer who’d shot him. The lawyer was arrested that same day. He flipped on Patricia immediately, testifying that she’d ordered the hit from prison, that she’d promised him $100,000 to kill me and make it look like an accident.
Patricia’s appeal was dismissed. The DA added more charges—conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation of murder, witness tampering. Her sentence was increased by another twenty years.
She’d be seventy-nine when she got out. If she lived that long.
This time, when they led her away, she didn’t look at me.
May you like
She didn’t say a word.
It was finally over.
