Chapter 12 - The Man in the Parking Garage
Police searched the garage.
Sloan was gone.
His truck remained.
Inside, they found restraints, two prepaid phones, medical tape, and a hospital visitor map.
One entrance had been circled.
Mine.
I did not sleep that night.
Every hallway sound became a threat.
Every cart wheel sounded like footsteps.
Deputy Cole sat outside my room until sunrise.
At three in the morning, I asked him why.
“You’re not assigned to sit there all night.”
He looked through the doorway.
“No.”
“Then why are you?”
He shrugged.
“Because somebody should have noticed sooner.”
I almost told him it was not his responsibility.
Then I realized I was tired of comforting people for failing me.
So I simply said, “Thank you.”
Police traced Sloan’s prepaid phone.
Most calls went nowhere.
One number connected to Patricia’s attorney’s office.
Another connected to Daniel’s former business partner.
A third connected to my father.
My father denied speaking with Sloan.
Phone records proved otherwise.
He eventually admitted Daniel had introduced them months earlier.
Daniel told him Sloan specialized in “family medical transport.”
Again, Dad claimed he never understood the truth.
Again, everyone else had paid the price for what he chose not to understand.
Then prosecutors discovered another transaction.
Patricia had transferred eighty thousand dollars to Sloan.
The date was the morning after I was buried.
That destroyed Mara’s claim that the kidnapping plan had been vague.
Patricia had paid for it while I was still underground.
The prosecutor upgraded the charges.
Conspiracy.
Kidnapping-related charges.
Financial crimes.
Evidence tampering.
Abuse.
And additional charges tied to the danger created for my unborn child.
Daniel’s attorney requested release on bond.
The judge denied it.
Patricia’s attorney requested home confinement.
Denied.
Mara’s cooperation kept her situation uncertain.
Then came the surprise.
Sloan called the prosecutor himself.
He offered surrender.
But only if he could speak directly with me first.
The prosecutor refused.
Sloan called again.
He said there was something I needed to know about Daniel.
Something none of the records showed.
Hannah asked what.
Sloan gave one sentence.
“Claire was not the first wife.”
I stared at Hannah.
Daniel had never been married before.
At least that was what he had told me.
Within an hour, Ortiz searched sealed court databases.
She found a marriage license from eleven years earlier.
Daniel Hale.
Rebecca Lane.
Marriage duration.
Seventeen months.
Then nothing.
No divorce record.
May you like
No annulment.
Rebecca Lane had simply disappeared from the public record.
