Chapter 8 - The Woman in Blue Scrubs
Security caught her in the parking garage.
She wasn't a nurse.
Her badge was fake.
Her name was Celeste Ward.
More interesting was the phone inside her pocket.
It contained a single active conversation.
Samuel.
My brother had sent her instructions.
Wyatt closed his eyes when I told him.
“I warned you.”
“You did.”
“Does that mean I finally get credit for being smarter than you?”
“No.”
He smiled weakly.
Good.
Still my son.
Samuel had apparently activated his trustee credentials using old authorization keys preserved by Evelyn.
But something didn't fit.
If Samuel wanted Heartland, why wait nineteen years?
Why reveal himself now?
I called him.
He answered.
“You're making this difficult.”
“You activated the trust.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To stop Margaret.”
That wasn't the answer I expected.
Samuel claimed Margaret had obtained enough forged credentials to seize North Meridian and use its dormant Heartland stake.
By activating his legitimate trustee status first, he froze the assets.
“Then why send Celeste?”
“I didn't.”
“She has your messages.”
“Then they're fake.”
Possible.
I had seen too many forged signatures to dismiss it.
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere Margaret can't find me.”
“Samuel.”
“Abraham, Evelyn made one mistake.”
“What?”
“She trusted Margaret.”
Then the call ended.
Detective Chen examined Celeste's phone.
The messages weren't from Samuel.
They had been spoofed.
Margaret again.
Always Margaret.
But Celeste refused to speak.
Until Wyatt saw her.
His expression changed.
“I know her.”
Celeste stared.
“From where?”
Wyatt thought.
Then remembered.
His wedding.
Celeste had been one of Sabrina's bridesmaids.
Sabrina went white when shown the photograph.
“That's not Celeste Ward.”
“Who is she?”
“Caroline Shaw.”
Margaret's daughter.
Now we had family inside family.
Caroline had befriended Sabrina years before Margaret officially contacted her.
This plan hadn't begun fourteen months ago.
It began before Wyatt's marriage.
“How long?” I asked Sabrina.
She started shaking.
“Caroline introduced me to Wyatt.”
My son went silent.
His marriage had been engineered.
Perhaps not his feelings.
But the meeting.
The opportunity.
The access.
Margaret had positioned Sabrina beside my son years before she needed her.
That was colder than greed.
That was planning.
Then Caroline finally spoke.
“My mother isn't trying to steal Heartland.”
“What is she doing?”
“Destroying it.”
“Why?”
Her eyes settled on me.
“Because Heartland killed my father.”
I knew Margaret's husband, Jonathan Shaw.
He supposedly died in a warehouse accident twenty-three years earlier.
One of mine.
The official investigation blamed equipment failure.
Caroline smiled bitterly.
“Another accident, Abraham?”
Too many accidents.
Samuel's truck.
Jonathan Shaw.
Eventually Evelyn.
Maybe none were accidents.
“Who killed him?”
Caroline looked toward the door.
“My mother thinks you did.”
“And you?”
“I thought so too.”
“Past tense?”
She nodded.
“Until I found my father's autopsy.”
There were injuries inconsistent with the warehouse collapse.
He had been attacked before the accident.
“By whom?”
She swallowed.
“Someone wearing a Heartland championship ring.”
I stared.
We had given those rings to six senior executives after our tenth anniversary.
I still owned mine.
Samuel had one.
Peter had one.
And Irving Palmer—
I suddenly remembered where I knew him from.
Before he became Sabrina's respectable father, Irving had worked under another name.
Twenty-five years earlier.
Heartland security.
Detective Chen pulled his employment photograph.
Young Irving.
Same eyes.
Different surname.
And on his hand—
a Heartland championship ring.
Sabrina stared at the screen.
“No.”
Her father hadn't entered Wyatt's life through her.
He had placed her in Wyatt's life.
Then the hospital alarm sounded.
An officer ran toward us.
Irving Palmer had escaped custody.
May you like
And the last security camera caught him entering Wyatt's room ten minutes earlier.
While all of us had been downstairs questioning Caroline.
