Chapter 6 - The Split
The heavy wrench slipped from my father’s fingers, clattering against the concrete floor just as Officer Vance pinned his shoulder to the dust. The chaos of shouts, flashing lights, and my mother’s hysterical shrieking filled the damp basement, but my eyes didn't leave the top of the stairs.
Emily was gone.
The landing where she had stood a second before was empty, save for a single droplet of fresh blood smeared against the white painted banister.
“Stay down! Hands behind your back!” Vance barked, wrestling my father onto his chest as Mark backed away with his hands raised, his eyes wide and vacant like a trapped animal.
“Livie! Livie, tell them!” my mother wailed, lunging toward me before two patrol officers caught her arms and pulled her backward. “She broke in! They broke in! They stole our private papers!”
“Shut up, Helen,” Matt growled, stepping in front of me as the dust and broken glass crunched beneath his shoes. He looked shaken, his knuckles scraped from grabbing the filing cabinet, but his focus was entirely on me. “Liv, did you see her?”
“Emily,” I breathed, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. The bruised cheek, the trembling panic at the precinct, the way she had magically appeared at the basement window just as the police breached—none of it was accidental. “Matt, she wasn't trapped. She was guiding them here.”
Before he could answer, Sergeant Vance straightened up, brushing gray concrete dust off his uniform pants and glaring at my handcuffed parents. “Well, you wanted a paper trail, Ms. Wilson. Looks like you found it, along with a few other surprises. But we’ve got a bigger problem right now.” He gestured up the stairs toward the empty landing. “Your sister just bolted out the side kitchen door. One of my units is chasing her down the alley, but she took her purse and car keys with her.”
I didn't hesitate. I pushed past the officers, ignoring my mother’s curses and my father’s dark, venomous glare from the floor, and sprinted up the wooden stairs.
The kitchen upstairs was bathed in the same bright afternoon sun, completely undisturbed compared to the chaos below. A half-cup of cold coffee sat on the counter. Next to it was Emily’s cell phone, left deliberately face-up on the laminate table. The screen was lit up with a text message notification from an unknown number: Package secured. Meet at the storage unit in twenty minutes. Don't let Olivia see the second ledger.
My breath caught in my throat. There was a second ledger.
Matt appeared behind me, his hand resting gently on my shoulder. “Liv... what do we do?”
May you like
“We find her,” I said, picking up the phone with a hand that didn't shake anymore. “Because if Emily thinks she’s cutting a separate deal with our parents’ lawyer to save herself, she has no idea what they’ve actually tied her name to.”
---
