Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE SECURITY FOOTAGE
The first threat arrived before midnight.
Naomi and I were in the secure apartment she had arranged under a temporary lease agreement. Lily was asleep in a bassinet beside the sofa, her tiny chest rising and falling under a pale pink blanket.
I had not changed out of my black dress.
I sat at the kitchen table with my shoes still on, staring at the city lights beyond the window.
Denver looked peaceful from twelve floors up.
Cars moved slowly through wet streets.
Snow fell in thin white lines beneath the streetlamps.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose and faded.
Naomi stood at the counter making coffee neither of us needed.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“You’ve been awake since five this morning.”
“I know.”
“You survived a wedding ambush, watched your husband get arrested, and learned that his mistress had evidence of a possible murder plan.”
“I know.”
Naomi set down the coffee pot.
“You do not have to keep proving that you are strong.”
I looked toward Lily.
“I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“What are you trying to do?”
I thought about it.
Then I answered honestly.
“I’m trying to make sure she never has to wonder whether I stopped fighting.”
Naomi’s expression softened.
Before she could respond, her phone vibrated.
She looked at the screen.
Then her face changed.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s Agent Voss.”
She answered immediately.
“Grant.”
I watched her listen.
The color drained from her face.
“When?” she asked.
A pause.
“Is she alive?”
Another pause.
“Send me the location.”
She ended the call and looked at me.
“Savannah is missing.”
My heartbeat slowed.
That was how fear arrived now.
Not as panic.
As focus.
“She left the hotel?” I asked.
“Her attorney says Savannah never made it to the federal office. Her driver found the car abandoned in a parking garage two blocks from the hotel.”
“Was there blood?”
“Not enough to confirm anything.”
“Did Blake make a call?”
“He had one phone call after being processed.”
“To whom?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I looked toward Lily again.
The room suddenly felt too exposed.
“Does Margaret know where we are?”
“No.”
“Does anyone from Blake’s family know?”
“Not officially.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Naomi was quiet.
Then she said, “No one I trust knows.”
At 2:11 in the morning, the building’s security system alerted us to a package in the lobby.
Naomi went still.
Neither of us had ordered anything.
Agent Voss sent two officers before anyone touched it.
The package was not a bomb.
It was worse.
Inside was a tiny pair of white baby boots.
The same size Lily would wear next winter.
Beneath them was a handwritten card.
SHE WILL NEED THESE WHEN YOU FAIL TO KEEP HER WARM.
There was no signature.
There did not need to be.
Naomi read the card twice.
Then she placed it into an evidence bag.
“Margaret,” I said.
“We can’t assume.”
“Who else would know exactly what to say?”
Naomi did not answer.
Because she knew I was right.
The next morning, Agent Voss brought us to a federal field office.
Lily remained with Elena, the nurse from the hospital, who had agreed to sit with her in a protected family room. I hated leaving Lily even for an hour, but Agent Voss promised the building was secure.
In the conference room, photographs covered the table.
Savannah’s abandoned car.
The parking garage.
Security-camera stills.
A blurred image of a man in a dark coat entering the garage ten minutes before Savannah disappeared.
The man was tall.
Broad-shouldered.
His face was hidden beneath a cap.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Agent Voss said.
“Could it be Blake?”
“No. Blake was already in custody.”
“Someone he hired?”
“Possibly.”
Naomi leaned over the photographs.
“Why take Savannah? She was going to cooperate.”
“Because she knew too much,” I said.
Agent Voss looked at me.
“What do you think she knew?”
I remembered Savannah’s face at the wedding.
The way she had said, I have copies of everything.
Not documents.
Everything.
“I think she knew the storm wasn’t the first plan,” I said.
Naomi’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“Blake didn’t create that insurance narrative overnight. He had been preparing for something. He had a doctor willing to falsify a psychiatric evaluation. He had a custody plan. He had an affair arranged around Lily’s birth. He had money moved through companies.”
I looked at the photographs.
“And he had someone willing to make a witness disappear.”
Agent Voss folded his arms.
“Your instincts?”
“My experience.”
“Say more.”
“Blake never acts without leverage. If Savannah kept evidence, he would not risk a public kidnapping unless the evidence could destroy more than his marriage.”
Naomi pulled out a notebook.
“Maybe the evidence involves Margaret.”
“No,” I said. “It involves someone bigger.”
The room became quiet.
Two hours later, the answer arrived.
A forensic accountant identified one of the shell companies used to transfer money from my grandfather’s trust.
It was called Silver Pine Consulting.
On paper, it was owned by Savannah.
In reality, it had been incorporated by a man named Richard Vale.
Richard Vale was not an Ashford employee.
He was the chief of staff for Colorado State Senator Martin Bell.
The senator had attended Blake’s wedding.
He had been seated six tables from the front.
He had left before the agents closed the ballroom doors.
Agent Voss looked at the report.
Then at me.
“Do you know Senator Bell?”
“Only professionally,” I said. “His office pushed for deregulation of private development funds two years ago.”
Naomi looked up.
“That would have benefited Ashford Alpine.”
“Exactly.”
We found more.
Emails between Blake and Richard Vale.
Payments labeled “policy consulting.”
A land-development project near Breckenridge.
A proposed luxury resort that had been blocked because the land sat near a protected watershed.
Then a series of altered environmental reports.
The Ashford project had not merely stolen money from my trust.
It had purchased political influence to force through a development that could contaminate the mountain water supply.
The lodge where Blake locked Lily and me outside was not just a family property.
It was the center of a much larger fraud.
And Lily’s inherited trust had been the private bank funding it all.
By late afternoon, federal agents had obtained subpoenas for Senator Bell’s office and several Ashford companies.
That was when Agent Voss received another message.
This one came from Savannah’s phone.
A single photograph.
It showed Savannah sitting in a dim room, her makeup smeared, her hands tied in front of her.
A newspaper sat beside her.
The date was visible.
She was alive.
Below the photo was a message.
STOP DIGGING OR THE BABY BECOMES THE NEXT STORY.
Naomi’s face went white.
Agent Voss took the phone.
“Trace it.”
An agent rushed from the room.
I stood.
“No.”
Naomi grabbed my arm. “Kate—”
“No one is threatening my child again.”
“We are handling it.”
“Then handle it faster.”
The anger inside me felt cold and clean.
Not wild.
Useful.
Agent Voss looked at me carefully.
“I understand how this feels.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
The honesty stopped me.
He continued.
“But I know Blake’s strategy. He wants you frightened enough to make a mistake. He wants you to run, hide, speak publicly without protection, or contact someone you should not contact.”
“What should I do?”
“Stay alive. Stay near your daughter. Let us find Savannah.”
I wanted to argue.
Instead, I sat down.
Because I had learned something in the snow.
Survival was not always movement.
Sometimes survival was waiting long enough to see the trap.
That evening, I returned to the secure apartment and found a message waiting on the encrypted email Naomi had created for me.
The sender was unknown.
There was no subject line.
Only a video file.
Naomi opened it on a secure laptop.
The footage was grainy and silent.
A camera angle from inside the Ashford lodge.
The date stamp showed three months earlier.
I was pregnant.
Eight months along.
I appeared on-screen, walking through the lodge kitchen with one hand on my stomach.
Then Blake entered behind me.
He was holding a glass.
He said something I could not hear.
I shook my head.
He grabbed my wrist.
The video continued.
He forced me toward a cabinet.
My body hit the edge hard.
I remembered the bruise.
I remembered telling everyone I had slipped.
But I had forgotten the worst part.
Blake leaned toward the camera.
Looked directly into it.
And smiled.
Then the video ended.
A second message appeared beneath it.
YOUR HUSBAND DID NOT JUST RECORD YOU. HE RECORDED EVERY WOMAN HE HURT. FIND THE RED ROOM BEFORE MARGARET DOES.
I read the words twice.
Then I looked at Naomi.
“The red room,” she said.
“I know what it is.”
“What?”
“At the lodge, there was a locked office in the east wing. Blake called it his father’s archive room.”
Naomi stared at me.
“You think it contains more recordings?”
“I think it contains the reason Savannah disappeared.”
Outside the apartment windows, snow began falling harder.
And for the first time since the wedding, I understood the danger was not behind us.
May you like
It was waiting at the lodge where Blake had tried to leave us to die.
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