Chapter 12 - The Missing Six Hours
The official death certificate listed Evelyn’s time of death as 6:12 p.m.
Daniel had discovered her body at 12:37 a.m.
He had assumed emergency services later established an earlier medical estimate.
They had not.
The time had been deliberately entered.
Charlotte demanded every security archive from the Valle estate.
Most footage from that night had been deleted.
One camera remained.
The old gatehouse system stored images independently.
At 7:03 p.m., a black sedan left the estate.
The driver was Margaret.
A second figure sat in the passenger seat.
The image was blurred.
Daniel enhanced it.
Charlotte recognized her mother’s profile.
Evelyn had been alive.
Sebastian sat down heavily.
“Where did Margaret take her?”
Vehicle toll records provided the answer.
A private clinic in New Jersey.
Meridian Medical Center.
The clinic had closed seven years earlier.
Its owner had been Dr. Howard Pierce.
Charlotte felt rage rising inside her.
Pierce had admitted falsifying the toxicology report.
He had never mentioned treating Evelyn.
They contacted him again.
This time Pierce cried.
Margaret had brought Evelyn to his clinic unconscious.
“She was alive.”
Charlotte could barely speak.
“What did you do?”
“I stabilized her.”
“Then what?”
“Margaret said Evelyn had overdosed accidentally.”
Pierce discovered digitalis in her bloodstream.
He wanted to transfer her to a hospital.
Margaret refused.
At approximately eleven thirty, Evelyn regained consciousness.
She asked for Charlotte.
Pierce left the room to call an ambulance anyway.
When he returned, Evelyn had stopped breathing.
Margaret stood beside the bed.
“Did you see her touch my mother?”
“No.”
“Did anyone else enter?”
Pierce hesitated.
“One man.”
Charlotte’s chest tightened.
“Nathaniel?”
“No.”
Pierce described a tall man with dark hair and a scar near his jaw.
Sebastian whispered, “Adrian.”
Charlotte looked at him.
Pierce nodded when shown an old photograph.
“That was him.”
The room fell silent.
Charlotte’s father had been alive.
He had entered the clinic the night her mother died.
And then he disappeared again.
A call came from investigators tracing the Portuguese number found on Nathaniel’s satellite phone.
They had identified the subscriber.
Adrian Valle.
Living under the name Adrian Valez.
Near Lisbon.
Sebastian wanted to send authorities.
Charlotte shook her head.
“No.”
Sebastian stared at her.
“What are you proposing?”
“I call him.”
Daniel warned her Adrian might run.
Charlotte looked at Evelyn’s photograph.
“If he wanted to disappear forever, he wouldn’t have kept Nathaniel’s number.”
She dialed.
The phone rang twice.
A man answered.
Charlotte said nothing.
Neither did he.
Then the stranger whispered, “Charlotte?”
Her knees almost gave way.
She had never heard his voice before.
May you like
But he knew hers.
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