Chapter 16 - The Phrase Ethan Left Behind
Lily and Noah were safe.
The crying inside the house had come from a baby monitor recording played through a speaker near the front window.
Someone wanted me to believe the twins had been taken.
The officer had been found unconscious behind the detached garage.
Alive.
His weapon was untouched.
The message was not a kidnapping.
It was a warning.
Keller wanted Garage File Seven.
Unfortunately for him, I still did not know how to open it.
Then I remembered Ethan’s letter.
Not the words.
The paper.
At the bottom of the second page was a small handwritten symbol.
A mountain.
Beneath it, two letters.
LW.
I had assumed they meant Lily Walker.
But Lily had not been born when Ethan wrote the letter.
Then I remembered our first anniversary.
Ethan had taken me to Redfish Lake.
We hiked until I complained my feet were falling off.
At the top of a ridge, he carved nothing into a tree because he said people who damaged trees for romance were idiots.
Instead, he took my hand and said, “Lake water, mountain air, you.
That’s enough.”
LW.
Lake water.
I went through Ethan’s old voice messages.
Hundreds of them.
Birthdays.
Work calls.
Bad jokes.
Then I found one from three weeks earlier.
I had been angry because Ethan missed a prenatal appointment.
His voicemail began normally.
“Hey, beautiful.
I’m sorry.”
Then, strangely, he said:
“Remember Redfish?”
At the time I thought he was trying to make me smile.
He continued.
“Lake water.
Mountain air.
You.”
Then he laughed softly.
“Still enough.”
My entire body went still.
Margaret heard it too.
“That’s the phrase.”
We contacted Sloan.
Cybercrime investigators located a hidden server address embedded in Ethan’s estate documents.
A login screen appeared.
VOICE AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED.
I sat in front of the microphone.
My hands shook.
“Lake water.
Mountain air.
You.”
The screen changed.
ARCHIVE UNLOCKED.
Seven folders appeared.
GARAGE FILE ONE.
GARAGE FILE TWO.
GARAGE FILE THREE.
All the way to seven.
I clicked the final folder.
There were twelve files.
Photographs.
Financial records.
Security footage.
And one audio recording.
KELLER_MEETING_FINAL.
Detective Sloan pressed play.
Ethan’s voice came first.
“You stole from me.”
Keller answered calmly.
“You came here alone to accuse me?”
“I came here alone because I wanted to hear you lie.”
“You don’t understand the structure.”
“I understand forty-one million dollars.”
Silence.
Then Keller said, “You should worry less about me and more about your wife’s family.”
“I already know about Richard.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know he wants you gone.”
Ethan’s voice hardened.
“If anything happens to me, Claire gets everything.”
Keller laughed.
“No.”
My heart stopped.
Then Keller said the sentence Ethan had died trying to understand.
May you like
“If something happens to you, Claire is next.”
*
