Chapter 10 - THE REAL PLAN
Federal agents arrived that night.
They explained that someone had been using Ryan's company aircraft to move money across state lines.
But the forged manifest suggested something worse.
Someone planned to make it look as though Ryan had taken his wife and child out of the country.
If we disappeared during the wildfire, the story would have been simple.
A tragic family evacuation.
No survivors.
No questions.
I felt sick.
“Who would do this?”
The agent looked at Ryan's records.
“We don't know yet.”
“What about my husband?”
“We're investigating him.”
I stared through the window.
Caleb was asleep on the couch.
For the first time, I realized how close I had come to losing him.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
STOP DIGGING.
Another appeared.
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR HUSBAND HAS DONE.
Then a photograph.
Ryan standing beside a helicopter.
And beside him was a teenage girl.
I recognized her immediately.
She was the mechanic's daughter.
The girl whose father supposedly died from a mechanical failure.
Under the photograph was one sentence:
ASK RYAN WHY SHE DISAPPEARED.
I confronted him through a recorded call.
He was silent for a long time.
Then:
“She knows the truth.”
“What truth?”
“She saw what happened that night.”
“And you hid her?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
“I tried to protect her.”
“From whom?”
He whispered:
“From myself.”
I couldn't understand.
Then he explained.
The mechanic hadn't died immediately.
His daughter had arrived at the crash site.
She saw Ryan.
She saw Brooke.
She saw the men.
She heard them discussing the money.
And she ran.
Ryan had spent two years trying to find her.
May you like
But someone else had found her first.
And now she was missing again.
