Chapter 7 - ROSEWOOD GARDENSI did not go alone.
I also did not tell Patricia that.
The drive toward Asheville took us west through darkening skies.
Federal agents moved separately.
Marcus coordinated with local law enforcement.
Rachel remained with Abigail at a secure location in Charlotte.
I hated leaving my daughter.
She hated it more.
“She wants you angry,” Abigail said before I left.
“I know.”
“She wants you to make a mistake.”
“I know.”
“Mom.”
I looked at her.
“Come back.”
I touched her face gently.
“I will.”
Rosewood Gardens was not a garden.
It was an empire pretending to be a home.
The main house sat against the Blue Ridge foothills, surrounded by stone terraces, old greenhouses, and acres of formal gardens that had mostly gone wild.
The Fergusons had stopped using the property after Charles died.
According to records, it remained owned through a family trust.
I drove through the gates at 8:43 p.m.
Alone in my vehicle.
The agents stayed far enough away to remain unseen.
My phone rang.
Patricia.
“You followed instructions.”
“Where are you?”
“Drive to the greenhouse.”
I drove past the main house.
Headlights swept across broken fountains and statues covered in vines.
The greenhouse stood behind a row of ancient oak trees.
Most windows were dark.
One light glowed inside.
I parked.
Patricia waited beside a long wooden table.
She wore dark pants and a gray coat.
No designer suit.
No jewelry.
For once, she looked less like Charlotte royalty and more like what she really was.
A frightened woman protecting a collapsing kingdom.
On the table sat The Secret Garden.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
Patricia smiled.
“Abigail left it at our house years ago. I examined it. Then I returned it before she noticed.”
“So you never found the ledger.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“Nicholas talks too much.”
“He finally learned that loyalty to you comes with prison time.”
“My son is weak.”
“Both of them?”
A flash of anger.
Good.
“Where is the ledger, Rebecca?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is becoming a very tiresome answer.”
“You burned my home for nothing.”
“I did not burn your home.”
I studied her.
That surprised me.
“You expect me to believe you?”
“I expect you to understand that when a structure has many moving parts, not every part waits for permission.”
Gregory.
Or someone else in the network.
Patricia touched the book.
“Charles thought he was clever.”
“What did he know?”
“Enough to become sentimental.”
“He was trying to expose you.”
“He was trying to destroy his family.”
“No. You did that.”
Her face hardened.
“You military people always reduce everything to duty and betrayal.”
“And you reduce everything to ownership.”
“I built that family.”
“You controlled it.”
“I protected it.”
“You protected Nicholas when he beat his pregnant wife.”
Patricia went still.
“You protected Gregory after he ordered Maria attacked.”
Silence.
“You protected corrupt judges.”
She stepped closer.
“Do you think powerful institutions survive because everyone behaves morally?”
“I think criminals tell themselves that when they want to sleep at night.”
She laughed.
“Criminals?”
“Yes.”
“You wear a uniform representing a government that makes deals with people far worse than me.”
There it was.
The favorite defense of the guilty.
Someone else has done worse.
Therefore I am innocent.
“You asked me here for a reason,” I said.
Patricia picked up the book.
“Charles left marks inside.”
She opened the cover.
Certain letters had tiny pinpricks beneath them.
I had never noticed.
The marks formed a sequence of page numbers.
Patricia had discovered them.
But she could not solve what they meant.
“I spent five years trying to understand it.”
“And you think I can?”
“No.”
She smiled.
“I think Abigail can.”
That was why she had wanted my daughter alive.
Not mercy.
Utility.
“She loved the book as a child,” Patricia continued. “Charles knew that. He believed she would remember passages other people overlooked.”
I looked at the page numbers.
A childhood edition.
A first edition.
Different pagination.
But perhaps the same chapter references.
“Why threaten me instead of asking Abigail?”
“Because my daughter-in-law has become inconveniently brave.”
I almost smiled.
“Yes.”
“She gets that from you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Patricia’s eyes turned cold.
“You shouldn’t.”
She reached inside her coat.
I moved instantly.
Not toward her.
Sideways.
She pulled out a pistol.
But she did not point it at me.
She pointed toward a camera mounted above the greenhouse door.
“You really thought I would meet you without precautions?”
Then lights came on across the building.
Three men emerged from the shadows.
Armed.
My heart rate remained steady.
Patricia smiled.
“You brought people.”
I said nothing.
“I assumed you would. Federal agents?”
Silence.
“Police?”
Nothing.
Patricia nodded.
“Then let’s make this simple. Tell them to stay outside.”
“I don’t control federal agents.”
“No. But they care whether you live.”
One of the men searched me.
He removed my phone.
No weapon.
I had followed instructions in that respect.
What Patricia did not know was that the small decorative eagle pin beneath my collar was transmitting audio.
Technology had improved since my early deployment years.
Patricia placed the book on the table.
“You have ten minutes to solve Charles’s little puzzle.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then we leave.”
“Where?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“And if I solve it?”
She smiled.
“Then perhaps you go home.”
A lie.
We both knew it.
I studied the page numbers.
Charles had once told Abigail about fathers leaving doors for daughters.
A garden.
A door.
I opened page twelve.
Nothing obvious.
Page forty-eight.
Then seventy-three.
Then ninety-one.
Each page contained one illustration or decorative symbol.
A key.
A robin.
A door.
A rose.
Key.
Robin.
Door.
Rose.
I remembered Abigail describing the story endlessly as a child.
The robin leads Mary to the key.
The key opens the secret garden.
But why rose?
Rosewood.
I looked around the greenhouse.
Old rose bushes grew beneath dirty glass panels.
One planting bed was framed with stone.
A small bronze robin sat on its edge.
I walked toward it.
Patricia followed.
The bronze bird rotated.
Beneath it was a keyhole.
Patricia inhaled sharply.
She had never found it.
I inserted the small brass key attached to the book’s ribbon marker.
A click.
Part of the stone frame released.
Inside was a narrow metal compartment.
Empty.
Patricia’s face transformed.
“No.”
I looked inside.
There was no ledger.
Just a folded piece of paper.
Patricia grabbed it.
She opened it.
Three words were written inside.
YOU’RE TOO LATE.
Her hands began shaking.
For the first time, I saw panic.
Real panic.
Charles had moved the evidence before he died.
Or someone else had.
Patricia pointed the gun at me now.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew!”
“No.”
“You and Charles planned this.”
“I barely knew Charles.”
“But Daniel did.”
My husband’s name coming from her mouth stopped me.
“What do you know about Daniel?”
Patricia’s expression changed.
Too late.
I stepped closer despite the gun.
“What do you know about my husband?”
“Back up.”
“Daniel died in a highway accident.”
“Rebecca.”
“What do you know?”
She looked toward one of the armed men.
And that was enough.
A thought entered my mind that I did not want.
Daniel.
Rain.
A supposedly drunk truck driver.
A crash investigators called unavoidable.
My husband had died twelve years earlier.
Charles had warned him about the Fergusons.
My voice dropped.
“Did you kill my husband?”
Patricia said nothing.
The silence answered before she did.
Then one of the armed men touched his earpiece.
“Movement outside.”
Patricia’s eyes snapped toward the doors.
“Go.”
Everything happened quickly.
Lights went out.
Glass shattered.
Someone shouted.
Federal agents breached from two sides.
I dropped behind the stone planter.
Gunfire exploded overhead.
Patricia ran through a side door.
One armed man surrendered.
Another fired and was wounded.
The third disappeared into the darkness.
I chased Patricia.
She reached the old garden path.
“Stop!”
She turned and fired.
The bullet struck stone beside me.
I kept moving.
She ran toward the main house.
Then suddenly she stopped.
Red and blue lights appeared beyond the trees.
Patricia was trapped.
She raised the gun.
Not at police.
At herself.
“Patricia!”
Her hand trembled.
“You don’t understand what happens if that ledger becomes public.”
“Then explain it.”
“People bigger than my family fall.”
“Put down the gun.”
“You think this ends with me?”
“No.”
I took another step.
“I think it starts with you.”
Her hand shook harder.
Then another voice called from behind me.
“Mom!”
Nicholas.
He was wearing a protective vest, hands cuffed in front of him, escorted by federal agents.
He had agreed to assist.
Patricia stared at her son.
Nicholas looked broken.
“Put it down.”
“You betrayed me.”
“You destroyed us.”
“I made you.”
“You made me into someone I hate.”
Patricia’s face collapsed.
The gun lowered.
Agents rushed her.
Within seconds, she was on the ground.
Handcuffed.
For the first time in decades, Patricia Ferguson no longer controlled the room.
As they pulled her to her feet, she looked at me.
“You still don’t know where the ledger is.”
I met her eyes.
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“Then Daniel died for nothing.”
Every sound around me disappeared.
I stepped toward her.
“What did you say?”
Agents moved between us.
Patricia laughed.
May you like
And in that moment, this case stopped being only about my daughter.
Because somewhere inside Patricia Ferguson’s secrets was the truth about the night my husband died.
Related Stories
