Chapter 5 - RACHEL'S SECRETDaniel couldn't sleep that night.
He sat in the living room while Emma slept upstairs.
The photograph lay on the coffee table.
He kept staring at it.
Rachel had always seemed ordinary.
A quiet woman.
A loving mother.
Someone who complained about grocery prices and forgot where she put her keys.
But now Daniel wondered how much of her life he had never known.
At two in the morning, Marcus returned.
Daniel let him in.
“Tell me everything.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Your wife found evidence that someone was stealing money from a children's charity.”
Daniel's jaw tightened.
“How much?”
“Millions.”
“Who?”
Marcus shook his head.
“We don't know yet.”
“Rachel did?”
“She knew enough to become dangerous.”
Daniel looked upstairs.
“And Emma?”
Marcus's expression darkened.
“Rachel believed the people involved had discovered she had a child.”
Daniel stood.
“You're saying they would hurt a four-year-old?”
Marcus didn't answer.
That silence was answer enough.
Daniel remembered the empty refrigerator.
The missing food.
The note.
Suddenly, another thought struck him.
“What happened to the money?”
Marcus looked at him.
“Your wife hid it.”
Daniel's eyes widened.
“Where?”
“We don't know.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Both men looked up.
Then came Emma's voice.
“Daddy?”
Daniel ran upstairs.
Emma was sitting on her bed, crying.
She pointed toward the window.
“There was a man outside.”
Daniel rushed to the window.
Nothing.
Only rain.
But in the mud beneath the window were fresh footprints.
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Someone had been there.
And they had been watching Emma.
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