“Find her before the police do.”
By morning, the ruined Whitmore mansion looked like a battlefield.
In the library, police laid photographs and documents across the long oak table.
Victor had withdrawn nearly twelve million dollars in forty-eight hours.
Private airfields were alerted.
Offshore accounts emptied.
“He’s running,” Rowan said. “But not alone.”
He slid forward a photograph.
Victor stood beside three men. One face was circled.
Damien Voss.
Elise recognized him.
A billionaire investor. Respected in public. Feared in whispers.
“He and my father were business partners,” she said.
Rowan nodded.
“Federal investigators believe Voss helped him move illegal money for years.”
Oliver sat with a stuffed bear clutched to his chest.
“Is Grandpa in trouble?” he asked.
The room went still.
Elise pulled him close.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Did he hurt you?”
She could not answer.
Adrian knelt.
“No one is going to hurt your mother again.”
Oliver looked at him.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Later, alone in a guest room, Elise gripped the dresser as another memory broke open.
Her father’s office.
“She saw the transfers,” Victor hissed into the phone. “If Elise talks to federal investigators, everything collapses.”
Then another flash.
A USB drive.
Her purse.
The storm.
Headlights.
Brakes screaming.
Darkness.
Elise gasped.
“I had evidence.”
Adrian rushed in.
“What?”
“The night of the accident. I copied financial records onto a silver USB drive.”
Rowan stepped into the doorway.
“Do you know where it is?”
Elise closed her eyes.
Her purse.
Inside it, tucked behind Oliver’s ultrasound photograph.
“The hospital,” she said. “When I woke after the crash, I still had my purse.”
Rowan frowned.
“Records say your belongings were lost.”
Elise looked up.
“They lied.”
Then Rowan’s phone rang again.
He listened.
His face went pale.
“We found a witness,” he said.
Hope flickered.
Then died.
“Someone just tried to kill her.”
The witness was Nurse Maribel Crane, the woman paid to falsify Elise’s hospital records.
Adrian’s convoy reached the federal medical center under heavy guard.
Oliver slept against Elise’s shoulder, wrapped in Adrian’s coat.
“He looks peaceful,” she whispered.
“He has his mother back,” Adrian said.
Those words warmed her and broke her at once.
Inside the hospital, Nurse Crane lay in bed with a bandaged shoulder and frightened eyes.
When she saw Elise, she burst into tears.
“Oh God. You’re alive.”
Elise stood frozen.
“Tell them everything,” Rowan said.
“I never wanted this,” the nurse sobbed.
“Then why did you do it?” Elise asked.
“Because your father threatened my son.”
The room went cold.
The nurse told them Elise had been brought in alive after the crash. Victor arrived within the hour. Cameras were disabled. Doctors were bribed. Elise was declared unidentified.
“He searched your belongings himself,” Nurse Crane said.
“My purse?” Elise asked.
“Yes. But he never found what he wanted.”
The USB drive.
Still missing.
“Then Celeste came,” the nurse whispered. “She visited you almost every day. At first she seemed guilty. Then she became obsessed.”
“With what?” Adrian asked.
“With replacing you.”
The nurse cried harder.
“She would sit beside your bed and whisper, ‘He’ll love me eventually.’”
Elise felt ill.
“But then you vanished,” Nurse Crane said.
Elise frowned.
“My father moved me?”
The nurse shook her head.
“That’s the strange part. Three weeks after the accident, your room was empty. Victor was furious because no one knew where you’d gone.”
Silence fell.
If Victor had not taken Elise, then someone else had.
Before anyone could speak, alarms screamed in the corridor.
Agents shouted.
Doors slammed.
Rowan grabbed his radio.
“What’s happening?”
Static crackled.
Then a voice answered, terrified.
“Victor Harrow is in the building.”
Gunshots exploded down the hall.
Patients screamed.
Agents barricaded the door.
Then Victor’s voice came through the hospital intercom.
“Elise.”
Her blood froze.
“I know you’re here. You need to come with me.”
Adrian’s face turned to stone.
“These people cannot protect you,” Victor said.
Elise shook her head.
Then her father said the words that changed everything.
“The people hunting our family are already inside this hospital.”
No one moved.
“You were never supposed to survive the accident, Elise. But not because of me.”
Adrian stepped toward the speaker.
“You expect us to believe you?”
“You shouldn’t believe anyone,” Victor replied. “Especially Damien Voss.”
Rowan stiffened.
“Voss discovered Elise accessed the offshore accounts,” Victor said. “He ordered the crash. I hid her because if Voss knew she lived, he would have killed her.”
Then the wall erupted.
Bullets tore through the room.
Noah—Oliver—screamed into Elise’s chest. She clutched him tighter.
Armed men in black tactical gear stormed through smoke.
No badges.
No mercy.
One pointed at Elise.
“There she is.”
Adrian slammed him into the wall.
Agents fired.
Glass burst.
Machines sparked.
A gunman raised his pistol toward Adrian’s head.
Elise screamed.