Chapter 14 - The Dead Man in Emma’s Bedroom
The timestamp was six months old.
Thomas was alive.
Mark nearly collapsed.
“My father is dead.”
The camera disagreed.
Thomas leaned toward Diane.
“She’s remembering too fast.”
Diane whispered:
“You said children forget.”
“Rebecca did.”
“Not permanently.”
Then Thomas looked toward sleeping Emma.
“Where’s Hannah?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find her.”
Diane asked:
“And Laura?”
Thomas’s expression became cold.
“David will handle Laura.”
The recording ended.
Mark stared at his father’s face.
Then he vomited into a clinic trash can.
For once, I did not doubt his reaction.
Thomas had deceived his own son too.
Police exhumed the man buried under Thomas Patterson’s name.
Dental records did not match.
The body belonged to a homeless man who had died days earlier.
Thomas had staged his death.
Why?
Because Laura had begun investigating Hannah around the same time.
Thomas disappeared before she could connect him to the fire.
But he never stopped controlling Diane.
Or David.
Or Stevens.
Diane had been cruel.
Dangerous.
Criminal.
Yet even she had spent decades answering to someone else.
Police offered her a deal for information leading to Thomas.
She refused.
Until I showed her the twenty-third recording.
“Thomas recorded you too,” I said.
Her confidence vanished.
“He promised there were no cameras.”
“Apparently everyone in your life lies.”
That finally reached her.
She told us about an abandoned rehabilitation property outside town.
Thomas had purchased it through shell companies.
Police raided it that night.
Laura was there.
Alive.
David had actually been helping her reach Thomas.
Thomas caught them first.
Hannah arrived voluntarily after receiving Laura’s distress message.
All three survived.
Thomas did not surrender.
He fled through a rear service tunnel.
But he left his archive.
Boxes documenting twenty-four years of blackmail.
Payments.
Medical alterations.
Photographs.
Recordings.
My father Michael had paid Thomas for years to keep Hannah hidden.
After Michael died, Thomas began extorting Diane, Stevens and even David.
Then we found something worse.
A folder labeled:
EMMA.
Inside were custody documents.
Psychological assessments.
Draft allegations against me.
Plans to portray me as unstable.
If Diane’s medication made Emma sick or confused, Thomas intended to blame me.
Then Mark could seek emergency custody.
Mark swore he knew nothing.
The documents supported him.
His signature had been prepared but never obtained.
Diane had told Emma Daddy would send Mommy away because that was literally the plan.
Thomas wanted my daughter separated from me.
Why?
One document answered.
Because Emma was the last person Hannah trusted enough to approach.
Thomas believed controlling Emma would force Hannah back into hiding.
Then an officer found a map.
One location circled.
Our house.
Detective Coleman looked at the timestamp on a security alert.
Front door opened.
Five minutes earlier.
Thomas had not escaped town.
He had gone home.
May you like
My home.
And Emma’s bedroom camera had just activated again.
