Chapter 14 - The Burning Clinic
Smoke filled the hallway within seconds.
Agents cut Dr. Shah free.
I crawled toward the stairwell.
Evan grabbed my arm.
“Not that way.”
I jerked away from him.
He looked hurt.
I did not care.
“There’s a service elevator,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“My mother showed me the building months ago.”
Everything stopped.
“Months ago?”
Evan looked at the smoke.
“She planned this place as a fallback.”
Agent Frost pulled us toward the elevator.
We reached the loading dock as flames spread through the upper floors.
Diane was gone.
A maintenance van was missing.
Dr. Shah survived with minor injuries.
No officers were killed.
But Diane escaped again.
Evan was returned to federal custody.
This time, he offered everything.
Not because he became good.
Because he finally understood Diane would sacrifice him without hesitation.
He gave agents account passwords.
Safe locations.
Client names.
Burner phone numbers.
He admitted helping move money.
He admitted lying to clients.
He admitted signing forged documents.
He admitted strangling me.
“I thought you were going to expose us,” he said during his statement.
I watched through the glass.
Cole asked.
“So you tried to kill her?”
Evan cried.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
That excuse made something inside me settle.
For months, I had wondered whether the man who hurt me was different from the man I married.
He was not.
The man I married had always been there.
I simply met him slowly.
Then Evan revealed something worse.
Diane kept a second ledger.
The red ledger tracked money.
The black ledger tracked people.
Payments.
Threats.
Accidents.
Deaths.
My father was in it.
Thomas Bell was in it.
Possibly others.
“Where is the black ledger?”
Evan hesitated.
“My mother kept it in a bank deposit box.”
Agents searched the bank.
The box was empty.
It had been accessed two days earlier.
Security footage showed a woman wearing a dark wig.
Diane.
But another person entered the vault ten minutes later.
A man.
Officer Ramirez.
The police officer who first took Evan’s statement at the hospital.
I stared at the screen.
Ramirez had been the first person inside my hospital room.
He knew about the recorder.
He knew where Nora was staying.
He knew every move police made.
Then I remembered the threatening flower card.
Grant said he did not write it.
Diane denied nothing, but she had never admitted sending it.
Someone with hospital access could have switched the note.
Ramirez.
Detective Cole looked sick.
“He’s been feeding her information.”
Agent Frost immediately issued an internal alert.
Ramirez’s phone was already off.
His apartment was empty.
His patrol weapon was missing.
And on his kitchen table, investigators found a photograph of me.
May you like
Across my face, someone had written one sentence.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DIED THE FIRST TIME.
