Chapter 14 - WHAT BRENDA KNEW

Shawn picked up the phone on his side of the glass.

“Tell me everything.”

Brenda wiped her eyes.

“Mark started talking about you six months ago. He said your transfers were getting harder to manipulate because your company had better security.”

“What did he want?”

“Access to your investment accounts.”

“And when I came home?”

“He said if you found Mom and Dad before the closings, everything would collapse.”

Shawn’s voice stayed flat. “So he planned to kill me.”

“He called it an accident.”

“What kind?”

Brenda looked away.

“Your truck. The brakes.”

Shawn remembered driving through mountain roads in snow to reach Pinewood Ridge.

His hands tightened around the phone.

“Did he touch my truck?”

“No. I hid your keys after you arrived.”

Shawn stared at her.

He remembered placing his keys on the hallway table.

Later, Brenda had handed them back, claiming she moved them so they would not get lost.

“Why protect me and lock our parents in a basement?”

The question broke her.

“I don’t know!”

Her cry echoed through the visiting room.

Then she lowered her voice.

“I kept telling myself I was only borrowing the money. Then it became too much to pay back. Mark said we could fix it if we sold the house. Dad found the statements. Mom threatened to call you. Everything kept getting worse.”

“So you locked them downstairs.”

“I panicked.”

“You did it more than once.”

She closed her eyes.

“Yes.”

Brenda continued.

“Mark changed. Or maybe I finally saw him.”

“Where is the proof about my truck?”

“He texted Denise about it.”

“Where’s the phone?”

Brenda hesitated.

“In Mom’s old sewing machine.”

Police recovered a burner phone hidden inside the machine’s base.

The messages were explicit.

IF S SHOWS, CUT LINE.

MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ICE.

Shawn read them once.

Then handed the phone back to Ortiz.

“Charge him with everything you can.”

She nodded.

But there was another message.

One Brenda had never seen.

MARK: AFTER CHRISTMAS, BRENDA BECOMES THE PROBLEM.

DENISE: SAME SOLUTION?

MARK: SAME SOLUTION.

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Brenda had helped build the trap.

And Mark had planned to bury her in it too.