Chapter 2 - The Night of the Collision
For several seconds, I forgot the pain.
I forgot the cold.
I forgot that my leg might be bleeding beneath the brace.
All I could see was the frozen image on the monitor.
Margaret stood beside Daniel’s SUV in the same cashmere coat she had worn when she visited me in the emergency room. Her hands were shaking. The vehicle’s right headlight was broken.
Daniel was holding a dark towel against the grille.
The timestamp read 8:42 p.m.
Thirty-seven minutes after a black SUV had struck me in the parking lot outside Bennett Medical Technologies and left me on the pavement.
I pressed PLAY.
The footage began without sound, but the garage camera had captured everything clearly.
The steel door rose.
Margaret drove inside too quickly, nearly striking my father’s workbench. She climbed out and stared at the damaged front end.
Daniel entered from the house.
Even without audio, their panic was obvious.
He grabbed her shoulders.
She pushed him away.
Then she pointed toward the bumper.
Daniel walked around the vehicle, bent down, and removed something from the cracked grille.
A piece of gray fabric.
The coat I had been wearing when I was hit had been gray.
My stomach turned.
Daniel stuffed the fabric into a trash bag. He wiped the bumper, replaced one license plate with another, and covered the SUV with a tarp.
Margaret paced behind him.
At one point, she stopped and looked directly into the camera.
Her expression was not remorse.
It was fury.
I realized she had not panicked because she had hurt me.
She had panicked because I had survived.
The garage suddenly seemed smaller.
This was not a cruel attempt to frighten me into signing documents.
My husband and his mother had already tried to kill me once.
The emergency telephone sat inside the drawer.
I grabbed it and pressed the button for Rebecca’s private number.
She answered on the first ring.
“Claire?”
My voice broke.
“Rebecca, they hit me.”
“What?”
“The accident. Daniel and Margaret caused it. The garage footage recorded them.”
Rebecca went silent for less than a second.
Then the lawyer in her took over.
“Where are you right now?”
“In the garage.”
“Are you safe?”
“No.”
I told her what had happened after I came home.
I told her about the crutches, the medication, and the conversation in the kitchen.
Rebecca did not interrupt.
When I finished, her voice was dangerously calm.
“The security system sent the files to me thirty seconds ago. I’m downloading copies now.”
“Call the police.”
“I already have another phone in my hand. They’re being dispatched.”
A crash sounded inside the house.
Daniel’s voice came through the monitor.
“What was that?”
The workbench had made a soft tone when the upload completed.
Margaret stood from the barstool.
“Did it come from the garage?”
My pulse raced.
“They heard the system,” I whispered.
“Claire, is there another way out?”
“There’s an old storm shelter beneath the workbench.”
“Can you reach it?”
The entrance was hidden beneath a rubber mat and a steel panel. My father had built the shelter after a tornado damaged three homes in our neighborhood.
I had not opened it in years.
“I’m already beside it.”
“Get inside. Take the emergency phone with you.”
I placed the receiver between my shoulder and cheek and dragged the mat aside.
A brass handle was set into the floor.
I pulled.
Nothing happened.
The panel had swollen inside its frame.
On the monitor, Daniel unlocked the kitchen door.
A line of warm light cut across the garage floor.
I froze.
Daniel stepped inside.
He did not see me immediately because the workbench was partly concealed behind metal shelving.
“Claire?”
His voice had changed.
It was soft now.
Concerned.
The voice he used when other people were watching.
“I heard something,” he called. “Are you okay?”
Margaret appeared behind him holding my prescription bottle.
Her eyes searched the floor.
“Maybe she passed out,” she whispered.
Daniel switched on the overhead light.
I shoved the telephone into the pocket of my hospital sweater and pulled the brass handle with both hands.
The panel lifted half an inch.
Pain shot through my shoulder.
I nearly cried out.
“Claire,” Rebecca whispered through the receiver. “Do not answer them.”
Daniel walked farther into the garage.
His shoes clicked against the concrete.
I lifted the panel again.
It moved another inch.
Cold air rushed through the narrow opening.
The shelter beneath had its own battery-powered heater, but I had no idea whether it still worked.
Daniel came closer.
His shadow stretched across the wall.
Margaret followed him.
“I told you we should have tied her hands,” she said.
Daniel turned angrily.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Who is going to hear us?”
The tiny blue light on the camera continued blinking above them.
Daniel’s gaze moved toward the paint shelves.
He stopped.
For the first time that night, fear appeared on his face.
He walked toward the camera.
“What is that?”
Margaret stared at the blue light.
“I thought it was a sensor.”
Daniel pulled the paint cans aside.
The camera lens faced him.
He stumbled backward.
“No.”
“What?” Margaret demanded.
Daniel tore the device from the shelf.
The wire snapped, but the blue light remained on because the camera contained an internal battery.
He threw it onto the floor and crushed it beneath his heel.
The monitor beside me went black.
But the upload had already finished.
The other security feeds remained visible because they were connected through a separate control box.
Daniel looked around the garage.
“Where is she?”
Margaret’s face had gone pale.
“She couldn’t have moved.”
“She activated the system.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the camera was recording.”
Margaret grabbed his arm.
“Then destroy the computer.”
“The storage drive isn’t in the office. Claire’s father designed this system.”
They both looked toward the workbench.
I pulled the storm panel one final time.
It opened far enough for me to slide my upper body through.
The narrow staircase descended six feet into darkness.
There was no safe way to climb down with my leg.
I did not have a choice.
I lowered myself backward, holding the edge with both hands.
My good foot found the first step.
Then the second.
My injured leg hung rigidly above me.
Daniel shoved a metal shelf aside.
It crashed against the wall.
I lost my grip.
My body dropped.
I struck the stairs, slid downward, and landed on the shelter floor with my injured leg twisted beside me.
I bit my sleeve to smother the scream.
Above me, footsteps approached.
The steel panel remained open.
Light poured through the opening.
I dragged myself away from the stairs.
The shelter was small, barely larger than a walk-in closet. My father had stocked it with blankets, bottled water, flashlights, and an old medical kit. A control panel glowed on the wall.
The heater turned on automatically.
Rebecca’s voice came through the phone.
“Claire?”
“I’m inside.”
“Police are eight minutes away. The storm has slowed them down.”
Eight minutes.
It sounded like eight years.
Above me, Daniel reached the workbench.
Drawers opened and slammed shut.
Margaret knocked tools onto the floor.
“Find the drive!” she shouted.
Daniel cursed.
Then everything became quiet.
Too quiet.
The brass handle on the storm panel moved.
I crawled toward the control panel and pressed a button labeled SEAL.
A motor groaned.
The steel panel began closing.
Daniel grabbed it before it could lock.
His fingers appeared through the opening.
“Claire!”
I pressed the button again.
The motor strained against his grip.
He wedged something metal between the panel and the frame.
The opening remained three inches wide.
“Claire, listen to me,” he said, breathing hard. “You’re hurt. You’re confused. Let me help you.”
I looked at the telephone.
Rebecca was still listening.
“You tried to kill me.”
“That’s the medication talking.”
“I watched the footage.”
Silence.
Margaret appeared above him.
“What did she say?”
Daniel did not answer her.
I stared at the narrow opening.
“I saw the SUV.”
Margaret’s face entered my line of sight.
All the color left her skin.
Daniel slammed his palm against the panel.
“You need to delete that footage.”
“It’s already been uploaded.”
Margaret staggered backward.
Daniel remained still.
“To where?”
“My attorney has it.”
“You’re lying.”
“Ask Rebecca. She’s on the phone.”
I held the receiver close to the opening.
Rebecca’s voice filled the shelter.
“Hello, Daniel.”
He recoiled as though she had struck him.
Rebecca continued.
“I have the recording of you discussing Claire’s death. I have footage of Margaret driving the damaged SUV into the garage. I also have copies of every document you tried to force Claire to sign.”
Daniel stood slowly.
Margaret whispered, “We have to leave.”
Daniel’s panic hardened into anger.
“No. If we leave, it looks like an admission.”
“It is an admission!”
“Shut up.”
He looked down through the opening.
“You’ve always been suspicious, Claire. That was your problem. You never knew how to trust your own husband.”
“You ran me down with a car.”
“I wasn’t driving.”
The words came too quickly.
Margaret stared at him.
“Daniel.”
He looked at her.
Something inside their partnership cracked.
“You said no one would be in the parking lot,” Margaret whispered.
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“You agreed to scare her.”
“You told me to keep going.”
Rebecca heard every word.
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The confession.
Daniel realized it a second too late.
He bent down and reached through the narrow opening.
“Give me the phone.”
I moved backward.
His fingertips brushed my sweater.
“Give it to me!”
The panel groaned beneath his weight.
Margaret grabbed his shoulder.
“The police could already be coming.”
Daniel shoved her away.
She struck the workbench.
The medication bottle fell from her purse and rolled through the gap.
It landed beside me.
I picked it up.
The label had my name on it, but the seal had been broken.
Inside were far more pills than the doctor had prescribed.
Daniel had replaced them.
They had planned an overdose.
I held the bottle beneath the light so Rebecca could hear my words clearly.
“The prescription has been tampered with.”
“Do not take anything from that bottle,” she ordered. “Police will collect it as evidence.”
A distant siren cut through the night.
Margaret heard it.
Her face twisted with terror.
“We’re leaving.”
Daniel grabbed her wrist.
“No.”
“I’m not going to prison for you.”
“You were the one driving.”
“Because you told me Claire had discovered the transfers!”
The sirens grew louder.
Blue light flashed against the broken garage window.
Daniel released Margaret.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Daniel turned toward the storm shelter.
His face became strangely calm.
“If the police find her alive, we lose everything.”
Margaret stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
Daniel reached for the main electrical switch above my father’s workbench.
The switch controlled the shelter’s ventilation system.
May you like
He placed his hand on the lever.
“I’m saying we finish what we started.”
