Chapter 2 - The Funeral Without a Body
I regained consciousness inside a military medical aircraft.
The first thing I heard was a monitor.
The second was Colonel Hayes ordering someone to shut down all external communications.
“No civilian transmission,” he said. “No hospital intake under her legal name. Nothing leaves this aircraft.”
A medic leaned over me.
“Emma, stay with us. Your baby’s heartbeat is strong.”
Another contraction gripped me.
I clutched the colonel’s sleeve.
“Michael thinks I’m dead.”
William looked toward the medic, then back at me.
“He will continue thinking that.”
My mind struggled through the pain.
“You can’t hide me.”
“I can keep your location protected until we know how deep this goes.”
“What do you mean, how deep?”
Before he answered, a soldier handed him a secure tablet.
William read the screen.
His jaw tightened.
“Your husband reported you missing thirty-eight minutes after leaving the mountain.”
That was too fast.
Search teams had barely mobilized.
Yet Michael already had a timeline.
A statement.
A grieving performance prepared.
The military rescue had found me only because William had been searching the same area for someone else.
“Why were you there?” I asked.
His expression closed.
“That answer can wait.”
“No.”
A warning alarm sounded near the medical team.
The medic told me to conserve energy.
But I was done allowing men to decide when I could handle the truth.
“You spent twenty-nine years searching for me,” I said. “You were in the exact place where my husband tried to kill me. That is not coincidence.”
William looked at me for a long moment.
Then he said:
“I was tracking Michael.”
The words struck harder than the cold.
“My husband?”
“He used your family insurance trust to move money through companies connected to a federal contracting investigation.”
“I don’t have a family trust.”
“Yes,” William said quietly. “You do.”
Before I could demand more, another contraction tore through me.
The medics moved faster.
William stayed beside me until the medication blurred the ceiling lights.
The last thing I heard was him say:
“Keep both names off every system. She and the child do not exist outside this aircraft.”
When I woke again, daylight filled a private hospital room.
My stomach felt lighter.
Panic rose instantly.
“The baby?”
A nurse placed a bundled infant into my arms.
My son.
Alive.
His tiny face was red and furious at the world.
I began crying before I even touched his cheek.
“He’s healthy,” the nurse said. “Early respiratory distress, but he’s stable.”
William stood near the window in civilian clothes.
For the first time, he looked less like a colonel and more like a man carrying twenty-nine years of regret.
“What happens now?” I asked.
He walked closer.
“Officially, search teams found blood, torn fabric, and evidence of a fall. The storm made recovery impossible.”
“No body.”
“Michael doesn’t need one immediately. The insurance policy contains a catastrophic-disappearance clause.”
My skin went cold.
“He can collect without a body?”
“After an accelerated review, if enough evidence supports presumed death.”
Michael had prepared everything.
The location.
The weather.
The message from my phone.
Even the insurance language.
“How much does he know about you?” I asked.
William’s silence answered too much.
Then he handed me a secure tablet.
On-screen was live footage from a funeral home in Denver.
My funeral.
A closed casket covered in white lilies.
Mourners seated in rows.
Michael stood beside the coffin in an expensive black suit.
Ashley remained several feet behind him, dressed in black, her expression carefully solemn.
He placed one hand on the casket.
Then leaned toward her and whispered something.
The hidden microphone captured every word.
“She froze out there,” Michael murmured. “That useless woman finally got what she deserved.”
Ashley glanced toward the crowd.
“And the baby?”
“Gone with her.”
My arms tightened around my son.
William looked away, giving me privacy he could not possibly create.
Then Michael continued.
“When does the insurance release?”
Ashley answered:
“The final medical confirmation should be filed tomorrow.”
Medical confirmation.
I looked at William.
“What confirmation?”
He enlarged another document.
A report declaring me physically unlikely to have survived the fall.
It had been signed by a military-affiliated physician.
A colonel.
Not William.
Another one.
Colonel Stephen Mercer.
William’s face hardened.
“He was my deputy twenty-nine years ago.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
He looked at the sleeping child in my arms.
Then said the sentence that opened an entirely new nightmare.
May you like
“Stephen Mercer is the man who helped your mother take you from me.”
And tomorrow morning, he was scheduled to release Michael’s fifty-million-dollar payout.
