Chapter 7 - THE FALSE NURSE
Security footage showed Celeste leaving the hospital through a loading dock.
She changed clothes in a stairwell.
A gray sedan collected her.
The license plate was stolen.
Rebecca tracked traffic cameras for nineteen miles before losing the vehicle.
Then Emma remembered something.
“The lady had a hurt hand.”
Rebecca looked up.
“What?”
“At our house.”
Emma demonstrated.
“She kept holding it like this.”
Rachel stared.
“I never saw Celeste at the house.”
Emma shook her head.
“She looked through the window.”
It had happened two nights before Jonathan disappeared.
Emma had woken for water.
She saw a red-haired woman standing outside.
The woman placed one finger against her lips.
Then vanished.
Rebecca asked Emma why she had not told Rachel.
“I thought she was Mommy’s friend.”
“Why?”
“She was crying.”
That changed everything.
Celeste might not have entered the hospital to harm the babies.
Maybe she had been trying to reach them.
Rebecca returned to the message on the mirror.
THE CHILD SHOULD HAVE DIED TOO.
It had been assumed Celeste wrote it.
But the lipstick did not belong to her.
The unconscious nurse woke.
She remembered the attacker.
Male.
The attacker knocked her down before Celeste entered.
Celeste had found her unconscious and taken her scrubs.
She had not attacked her.
Celeste was not hunting the children.
She was hiding from someone else.
That evening, Rebecca received an anonymous text.
IF YOU WANT JONATHAN ALIVE, COME ALONE.
An address followed.
She did not go alone.
But she made it look that way.
The location was an abandoned church.
Celeste waited inside.
She looked exhausted.
Her red hair was tied back.
Her right hand was badly scarred.
“Where is Jonathan?”
Celeste answered—
“With Charles.”
Rebecca’s heart pounded.
“Prove it.”
Celeste handed her a photograph.
Jonathan was bound to a metal chair.
A newspaper lay beside him.
Dated that morning.
“He wants the flash drive.”
“Why keep Jonathan alive?”
“Because Jonathan changed the trust.”
Rebecca frowned.
“What trust?”
“The one controlling Hayes Global.”
Celeste explained.
Jonathan secretly amended succession documents after finding Rachel.
His children would inherit voting control.
But only if Rachel legally acknowledged their identity.
Charles could not simply kill Jonathan.
He needed Jonathan to sign a new amendment first.
“And the twins?”
Celeste looked sick.
“Insurance.”
“To force Rachel?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca studied her.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
Celeste looked toward the stained-glass windows.
“But I spent seven years helping Charles because I was too afraid to run.”
“Why change now?”
Celeste’s voice broke.
“Because he ordered a seven-year-old girl killed.”
Rebecca froze.
“Emma?”
Celeste nodded.
“He said Rachel had made one mistake eight years ago.”
May you like
“She gave birth.”
“And this time, he wanted no mistakes left alive.”
