Chapter 4 - BEFORE THE CRASH
Police arrived before midnight.
Margaret had already left the hospital.
She told Ethan she was going home to "protect the family from gossip." By the time officers reached the Hale estate, her bedroom safe was empty, her laptop was gone, and Victor Lane was no longer answering calls.
Ava didn't sleep.
Neither did Ethan.
At 3:14 a.m., he sat beside her bed and asked the question he had been avoiding.
"What do you remember about the crash?"
Ava stared at the ceiling.
Rain.
A narrow county road.
Her hands on the wheel.
A truck's headlights in the mirror.
Then the brake pedal sinking too easily beneath her foot.
"I told the police my brakes failed," she said.
"The report said you were driving too fast for the weather."
"I wasn't."
"I know."
She turned her head.
"Do you?"
That hurt him, and she meant it to.
After the accident, Ethan had let Margaret take control of the doctors, insurance, police calls, and even Ava's wrecked car.
"What happened to the car?" Ava asked.
Ethan froze.
"Mom said the insurance company totaled it."
"Did you see it after the crash?"
"No."
Ava's pulse climbed.
One memory returned with painful clarity.
Three days before the crash, she had argued with Margaret in the kitchen.
Ava had just sold her software company. After taxes and obligations, she controlled more than seventeen million dollars.
Margaret wanted Ava to place it in a family trust administered by Ethan's parents.
Ava refused.
"Your money should strengthen the family," Margaret had said.
"My money will protect my future children and my own choices," Ava answered.
Margaret had smiled.
"Choices disappear faster than people think."
Ethan went silent when Ava repeated the words.
Then his phone rang.
It was Detective Ruiz.
"Mr. Hale, we found something in your mother's office trash. A storage invoice. Your wife's totaled car was never sold to a salvage yard."
Ethan stood.
"Where is it?"
Ruiz paused.
May you like
"A private warehouse your mother has been paying for since the week after the crash."
• • •
