Chapter 6 - The Empty Nest
The light of the phone screen felt blinding in the predawn darkness of Samuel’s truck.
“If you hand those files to the state police tomorrow morning,” the message read, “your daughter Courtney won't be waiting at home when you get back.”
I stared at the words until they blurred together. My breath caught in my throat. Courtney. Whatever rage I had felt toward her on the cliff edge—whatever cold detachment had settled into my bones when Brandon broke down in the mud—shattered instantly. She wasn't just his accomplice. She was a pawn caught in a game she probably didn't fully understand, or worse, she was a hostage to Vance’s cruelty just as much as we were victims of Brandon's greed.
"Margaret?" Jonathan asked, noticing the way my hands were shaking as I held the phone out toward him.
He read the screen, and the hard, resolute color drained from his face, replaced by a deep, weary terror. He looked back toward the dark clearing where Brandon was still sitting alone in the mud, a pathetic heap of ruined ambition.
"Vance didn't just manage Brandon," Jonathan whispered, his voice cracking. "He's managed Courtney too. He knew where she’d go if things fell apart here."
Samuel leaned over from the driver's seat, his eyes scanning the message. He didn't curse; he just shifted the truck into drive and turned the wheel sharply to head back toward Upper Arlington, bypassing the highway toward the state police barracks.
"We can't go to the state police right now," I said, my voice tight and flat. "Not without knowing where she is. If Vance has her..."
"If Vance has her," Samuel interrupted steadily, "he’s using her to keep us from dropping that flash drive on the prosecutor's desk. But calling off the authorities doesn't guarantee she's safe, Margaret. It just means Vance wins completely."
"She’s our daughter-in-law," I murmured, staring out the frosted window as the bleak suburban landscape blurred past. "She's been part of our family for five years. I remember when they bought that apartment—we helped her pick out the curtains. How did it come to this?"
"Greed," Jonathan said bitterly, staring straight ahead at the dark asphalt. "And people who are far more dangerous than we ever realized."
When we pulled up to our house in Upper Arlington forty minutes later, the front door was wide open.
My heart stopped. We hadn't left it open when Brandon and Courtney fled earlier, nor when we rushed out to Dublin. Samuel drew his weapon instantly, stepping out of the truck and signaling us to stay back. He swept the dark porch, checked the perimeter, and then stepped inside.
A moment later, he flicked on the hallway light and waved us in.
The house hadn't been ransacked. It had been systematically cleaned out of anything that connected Brandon or Courtney to Marcus Vance. The tablet we had left on the kitchen counter was gone. The yellowed manila envelope containing the original 2004 Dublin property deeds was missing from Jonathan’s desk drawer.
And sitting neatly on the kitchen island was a single, handwritten note on a piece of our own stationery.
I walked over and picked it up. Courtney’s neat, looping handwriting stared back at me:
“I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. I tried to stop him from going too far, but once Vance got involved, there was no way out. If you ever want to see me again, drop the flash drive in the trash bin at the corner of Lane Avenue and stay out of Dublin.”
Jonathan stood beside me, reading the note over my shoulder. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked entirely defeated.
"She went with them," Jonathan said quietly. "Or she was taken. Either way, she’s tied to this now as deeply as Brandon is."
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I set the note down on the counter, feeling a cold, heavy realization settle into my chest. The game wasn't about property anymore. It was about survival. And if we wanted to save whatever was left of our family, we weren't going to do it by hiding behind the police.
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