Chapter 3 - SOMEBODY WAS WATCHING
Chloe took my phone immediately.
The photograph had been taken from across the hospital parking lot.
Police searched the area.
Whoever sent it was already gone.
Dominic was still in custody.
Victoria and Arthur had left the house under police supervision.
That meant somebody else was involved.
Chloe arranged for an officer outside my room.
“You’re not going home tonight.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have somewhere safe?”
I nodded.
My younger sister Erin lived forty minutes away.
Dominic hated her.
That suddenly made her home feel like the safest place in Connecticut.
The next morning, Chloe called.
The search warrant had been approved.
I met her three blocks from the Bennett house.
My hand was wrapped in thick white bandages.
The moment I saw the property again, my stomach tightened.
For eighteen months, I had called that place home.
Now it looked like a crime scene.
Investigators photographed the kitchen.
Another team searched Dominic’s study.
Chloe led me downstairs.
Behind the wine racks was the safe.
It was open.
Completely empty.
Chloe stared at it.
“Somebody got here first.”
“How?”
“Dominic was arrested.”
“Victoria and Arthur were escorted out.”
She looked toward the ceiling.
“Then someone else had access.”
We searched the surrounding shelves.
Nothing.
As I turned to leave, I noticed a thin blue corner beneath one of the wine cabinets.
I bent down.
Chloe stopped me.
“Don’t touch it.”
A technician pulled out a torn piece of cardboard.
Blue.
On it was part of a printed name.
CLAIRE BEN—
My name.
Another fragment was found beneath the cabinet.
ACCOUNT TRANSFER.
My legs weakened.
“What account?”
“We’ll find out.”
Upstairs, an officer called for Chloe.
Something had been discovered inside Dominic’s desk.
It wasn’t one of the missing files.
It was my passport.
My birth certificate.
My Social Security card.
Three expired credit cards I thought I had lost.
And a stack of envelopes addressed to me that I had never opened because I had never received them.
Chloe handed me gloves.
The first envelope came from a bank in Manhattan.
The second came from an investment firm.
The third was from a company called Bennett Strategic Holdings.
I had never heard of it.
The final envelope contained a photograph.
A young woman stood beside Dominic.
He looked about ten years younger.
His arm was around her waist.
On the back, someone had written a sentence in black ink.
I PROMISED I WOULDN’T LET HIM DO THIS TO ANOTHER WOMAN.
Below it was a name.
Rachel Mercer.
I looked at Chloe.
“Who is she?”
Chloe’s expression told me she already knew.
“Dominic’s first wife.”
I stopped breathing.
“He told me he’d never been married.”
Chloe turned the photograph over again.
“Then that’s the first lie we can prove.”
She paused.
“But it isn’t the worst one.”
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Rachel Mercer had vanished from Connecticut nine years earlier.
And according to the original police report, the last person known to have seen her was Victoria Bennett.
