Chapter 5 - THE DRIVER WHO SURVIVED
Police located Patrick Sloan at a private airfield outside the city.
He was attempting to board a charter flight.
Inside his suitcase, investigators found cash, two passports, and Lily’s stuffed rabbit.
Bunny’s torn ear hung open.
The hidden pocket was empty.
Patrick claimed Julian hired him to recover a family document.
He denied entering my house personally.
A man named Cole Brennan had done that.
Cole worked for Hart Security.
Samuel Ruiz had fired him six months earlier for accessing restricted camera systems.
Julian rehired him privately.
Officer Brooks asked why Patrick planned to leave the country.
He said he had received threats.
“From whom?”
Patrick refused to answer.
Then investigators showed him messages recovered from Julian’s phone.
Find the rabbit.
Remove anything digital.
Burn the rest.
Patrick’s face changed.
Julian had planned to destroy the only object connecting Patrick to Daniel.
Not only the rabbit.
The man carrying it.
Patrick requested protection.
He began talking.
Daniel had discovered that Hart Foundation money was moving through shell companies controlled by Julian.
The payments were labeled international medical partnerships.
Several hospitals did not exist.
Others received only a fraction of the reported amounts.
Daniel confronted Patrick because company cars had transported sealed financial files to Eleanor’s private estate.
Patrick admitted delivering them.
He claimed he did not know the contents.
Daniel did not believe him.
Three days before the crash, Daniel asked Patrick to drive him to meet a federal investigator.
Patrick informed Julian.
“Why?” Officer Brooks asked.
“Julian paid my gambling debts.”
The answer sounded almost ordinary.
That made it more disturbing.
A family empire had been protected by the same weaknesses found in any neighborhood.
Debt.
Fear.
Loyalty purchased at the correct moment.
Patrick described the night of the crash.
Daniel was supposed to meet the investigator after a board retreat.
Patrick drove the mountain road.
The brakes failed near a curve.
Daniel told him to use the emergency brake.
The car struck the guardrail.
Patrick jumped from the driver’s side after the impact.
Daniel remained trapped.
The vehicle rolled down the slope.
“You said the brakes failed,” Officer Brooks repeated.
“Yes.”
“Did you know they had been altered?”
Patrick looked toward his attorney.
“Julian told me the car would only become difficult to control.”
“He said Daniel needed a scare.”
“A scare?”
“He wanted Daniel to cancel the federal meeting.”
“Did Eleanor know?”
Patrick began crying.
“She arranged the mechanic.”
The room became silent.
The mechanic was named Robert Hale.
He had worked on Hart family vehicles for twenty years.
He died six months after Daniel.
The official cause was an accidental overdose.
Patrick said Robert had become frightened.
He threatened to confess.
Eleanor paid him once.
Julian visited him the night before he died.
My hands went numb as I listened from the adjoining room.
For two years, I had dreamed about Daniel’s last moments.
I wondered whether he had been afraid.
Whether he called my name.
Whether he knew he would not come home.
Now I knew his death may have been designed as a warning.
A warning that became murder because the people involved valued control more than the life inside the car.
Patrick’s cooperation did not reveal where the memory card was.
The rabbit’s pocket had been empty when he found it.
Lily insisted she placed the card there.
Then she remembered something.
“Bunny went to the hospital.”
I looked at her.
“What hospital?”
“When I broke my arm.”
That was eight months earlier.
The nurses removed Bunny before Lily’s X-ray.
A volunteer repaired the rabbit’s torn ear.
Lily had not hidden the card inside the ear afterward.
She placed it somewhere else.
“Where?” I asked.
May you like
Lily looked toward the evidence bag containing the Hart Diamond.
“Daddy said stars keep secrets.”
