Chapter 20 - THE COLD SMILE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
The county booking facility was a concrete tomb beneath the courthouse. Emma sat on a cold metal bench inside interrogation room 4, her hands cuffed to the heavy steel table bolted to the floor. The cut above her eyebrow had stopped bleeding, leaving a dried rust-colored streak down her cheek.
The heavy steel door buzzed and swung open.
Emma expected Marcus Sterling. She expected the district attorney with an indictment.
Instead, Daniel walked into the room.
His head was wrapped in white medical gauze, his face pale and bruised, his eyes dark with an exhaustion that ran bone-deep. Behind him stood two senior agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wearing tailored dark suits and gold badges on their lapels.
"Daniel..." Emma breathed, surging against the cuffs, the metal rattling against the table. "You're alive."
"Uncuff her," Daniel commanded, his voice raw, shaking with a dangerous authority that brooked no argument.
One of the FBI agents stepped forward, unlocked Emma’s restraints with a small silver key, and stepped back toward the door.
Daniel immediately pulled Emma into his arms, burying his face into her hair. His entire body trembled against hers. "They tried to tell me you hit me," he whispered furiously into her neck. "Sterling tried to get me to sign an affidavit before they even stitched my head."
"Where is the music box, Daniel?" Emma pulled back, looking into his eyes with frantic urgency. "Did they take the tape?"
"The FBI took it," Daniel said, gesturing to the agents behind him. "Sterling’s office was raided twenty minutes ago. The state police were compromised, Emma. Victoria had three judges and the county prosecutor on an offshore retainer funded by the mill’s indemnity payout."
"Then it's over?" Emma asked, hope suddenly flaring like a fragile match in the dark. "They're arresting Victoria?"
The lead FBI agent, Agent Vance—no relation, a stoic woman with sharp gray eyes—stepped forward, opening a manila dossier on the table.
"Victoria Vance suffered cardiac arrest an hour ago during transit to the federal holding facility," Agent Vance stated flatly. "She is in a medically induced coma at Presbyterian Hospital under armed guard. She will not be signing any more orders."
Emma let out a ragged breath, slumping against Daniel’s chest. "And Ava?"
"Thomas turned himself in," Daniel said softly, his thumb gently wiping a tear from Emma’s cheek. "He brought thirty years of hidden financial records to the federal building. Ava fled the state, but federal marshals have sealed the borders. She won't get far."
"Then who was in the car, Daniel?" Emma’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper.
Daniel frowned, his brow furrowing beneath the bandages. "What car?"
"Outside Thomas’s house," Emma said, cold dread creeping up her spine like freezing water. "When they were putting me into the squad car. A black town car was parked by the gate. There was a woman inside. Daniel... she looked exactly like my mother. Exactly like the photo of Judith."
Agent Vance and her partner exchanged a grim, unreadable look.
"Mrs. Vance," Agent Vance said carefully, closing the dossier. "When our team raided Sterling’s private vault an hour ago, we recovered the original coroner's report from the 1994 fire. The dental records matched Judith Arden, just as Thomas claimed."
"Then Judith is dead," Emma said, bewildered. "June survived and died of cancer five years ago."
"Judith died in the fire, yes," Agent Vance continued, her voice unnervingly steady. "And June Arden was buried in the municipal cemetery in Ohio five years ago."
"Then who was in the car?" Emma demanded, her heart beginning to pound once more.
Agent Vance slid a second, older photograph across the metal table.
It was a hospital birth registry from St. Jude’s, dated June 4, 1968.
There were not two names on the birth record.
There were three.
*June, Judith... and Juliette Arden.*
Triplets.
Before Emma could scream, the lights inside the interrogation room violently flickered and died, plunging the room into pitch-black darkness.
A deafening metallic clang echoed from the hallway, followed by the shrill scream of the courthouse security alarms.
Daniel lunged across the table, grabbing Emma’s hand in the pitch black. "Emma! Stay behind me!"
A sudden hiss of pressurized gas flooded the room from the ventilation grate above. The two FBI agents shouted, the heavy thud of their bodies hitting the linoleum floor vibrating through the steel table.
"Daniel!" Emma choked out, the sweet, sickening scent of aerosolized chloroform burning her throat.
Daniel’s grip on her hand tightened desperately, then violently slipped away as he collapsed onto the floor with a heavy groan.
Emma fell to her knees in the dark, her lungs burning, her vision spinning into a black void.
Footsteps approached through the darkness—slow, rhythmic, the unmistakable click of high heels on concrete.
A beam of a flashlight cut through the smoke, illuminating a woman’s face standing in the doorway. She wore a dark trench coat. Her wavy auburn hair fell over her shoulders, framing a face identical to June’s—identical to the woman Emma had mourned her entire life.
The woman knelt down beside Emma, tilting Emma’s chin up with a cold, leather-gloved hand.
A slow, terrifying smile spread across her lips.
May you like
"Hello, little niece," the woman whispered softly. "Your mother took my money. Your aunt took my face. And now... you are going to give me back my life."
The flashlight beam vanished, and the world went entirely black.
