Chapter 4 - The Fire at MalibuBy the time we reached Malibu, the cottage was burning.
I had watched him handle multimillion-dollar negotiations without raising his voice, but I had never seen the version of my husband who appeared after he found that photograph.
He called our head of security.
Closed the gates.
Collected every employee’s phone.
Ordered guards to check every room.
Nobody left.
Nobody entered.
“Julian,” I said, following him into the hall, “someone took that picture from outside the window.”
“No.”
He studied it again.
“The angle is too high.”
My stomach dropped.
“What does that mean?”
“It was taken from the balcony.”
The balcony connected three upstairs rooms.
Our bedroom.
The guest suite.
And my private sitting room.
Someone hadn’t photographed us from outside the property.
Someone had been inside our home.
Within an hour, seventeen employees were gathered in the library.
Some looked confused.
Some insulted.
Our longtime housekeeper, Teresa, was crying.
Julian’s security chief, Marcus Lane, stood at the door while two guards searched staff lockers and vehicles.
I hated every second of it.
These people had worked for us for years.
But then I remembered the note.
Someone close to you.
Evelyn refused to come downstairs.
She remained in the guest suite with one guard outside the door.
I walked among the employees.
“Does anyone recognize this envelope?”
Nobody did.
Marcus returned after forty minutes.
“No unauthorized devices. No second phones.”
Julian frowned.
“Security footage?”
“Checking.”
Our cameras covered the entire property.
At least I thought they did.
Marcus opened his laptop.
“Here.”
He showed us video from the second-floor hallway.
At 2:14 p.m., the camera went black.
It returned at 2:19.
Five minutes.
The photograph had been taken during that window.
“Can someone disable one camera remotely?” I asked.
“Not without system access.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed.
“How many people have access?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Myself. Mr. Mercer. The network administrator.”
“And?”
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
Me.
I almost laughed.
“Wonderful.”
Julian immediately shook his head.
“Nobody thinks Claire did it.”
But someone clearly wanted us to question everyone.
Perhaps that was the point.
Chaos.
Distrust.
Fear.
That evening, Evelyn finally came downstairs.
She had showered again and changed into clothes Teresa found in one of the guest closets.
Clean, she looked even more like my mother.
Older than the woman frozen in my memory, obviously.
But unmistakably her.
I couldn’t stop staring.
She noticed.
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“That you’re trying to find sixteen-year-old me in this face.”
I looked away.
“No. I’m trying to find my mother.”
Pain crossed her expression.
I regretted the words immediately.
But I didn’t apologize.
Not yet.
Twenty years was too large for quick forgiveness.
We sat in Julian’s study.
Marcus had discovered something worse.
The photograph hadn’t been printed on our property.
It came from a commercial photo printer.
That meant whoever delivered it could have taken the image earlier, left the house, printed it, returned, disabled security, and dropped the envelope.
Or someone outside the property had an accomplice inside.
“Safe-deposit box,” Julian said. “Tomorrow morning.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“I don’t want Claire going.”
“I’m going,” I said.
“Richard may be watching the bank.”
“Then he can watch me take back what belongs to us.”
Julian leaned forward.
“We do this carefully.”
He arranged two security vehicles.
Marcus would accompany us.
No household staff would know the destination.
At 9:10 the next morning, we entered Pacific Metropolitan Bank downtown.
Evelyn wore sunglasses and a scarf.
Nobody recognized her.
At least nobody seemed to.
The brass key opened box 417.
I expected documents.
Instead, when the bank employee left us alone in the private room, Evelyn lifted the lid and stared.
Empty.
The box was empty.
“No,” she whispered.
She checked underneath.
Nothing.
“I put everything here.”
Julian examined the box.
“Who else had access?”
“Nobody.”
I looked at the bank records attached to the account.
There was a stamped access log.
The box had been opened eleven days earlier.
By Evelyn Hart.
My mother stared at the signature.
“That isn’t mine.”
Julian’s face hardened.
Someone had used her identity.
Someone who knew she was alive.
The bank manager was summoned.
He looked increasingly nervous as Julian demanded surveillance footage.
After several calls, we were shown video.
A woman entered the vault eleven days earlier.
Approximately sixty.
Gray coat.
Dark glasses.
She signed as Evelyn Hart.
The camera captured her profile for less than two seconds.
My blood froze.
I recognized her.
“No.”
Julian turned to me.
“Claire?”
I moved closer to the screen.
The woman removed her glasses briefly.
It was Teresa.
Our housekeeper.
The woman who had worked for me for nine years.
The woman who helped me dress on my wedding anniversary.
The woman who sat beside my grandmother’s bed during her final weeks.
“Teresa?”
Evelyn whispered.
“You know her?”
I looked at my mother.
“She works for me.”
Evelyn’s face collapsed.
“No.”
“What?”
She backed away from the screen.
“Her name isn’t Teresa.”
Julian stood.
“What is her name?”
Evelyn looked as if she had seen a ghost.
“Marisol Vega.”
“Who is that?”
“The nurse.”
Silence.
“What nurse?”
“The woman who watched me in Mexico after Richard had me taken there.”
I stopped breathing.
We were already moving before Julian finished the call.
Marcus ordered the property sealed.
Teresa was not to leave.
But when we arrived home forty minutes later, the front gates were open.
One guard was unconscious beside the security booth.
Teresa’s room had been emptied.
Clothes gone.
Passport gone.
Computer gone.
Evelyn’s guest room had been searched.
The mattress sliced open.
Drawers dumped.
The locket missing.
I ran into my dressing room.
The cedar box was open.
Everything inside had been scattered across the floor.
My childhood photographs.
My mother’s letters.
My grandmother’s jewelry.
And one photograph was missing.
A picture of me at eight years old standing beside my mother and Uncle Richard.
On the back of that photograph, my grandfather had once written an address.
A place in Malibu we called the old cottage.
We hadn’t been there in decades.
I turned to Julian.
“She knows where the records are.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
“She emptied the safe-deposit box.”
“She took copies.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the real records were never kept in the bank.”
I stared at her.
“You said they were.”
“I lied.”
Julian’s expression darkened.
“Why?”
“To see whether I could trust you.”
That hurt more than it should have.
“After all this?”
“I survived twenty years by trusting nobody.”
She looked at the empty cedar box.
“But I made one mistake.”
“What?”
“The photograph Teresa took.”
I understood.
The Malibu address.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“That cottage is where your grandfather hid the originals.”
Julian grabbed his keys.
“No.”
Marcus stopped him.
“You’re not going without backup.”
Then Julian’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered on speaker.
A woman’s voice filled the room.
Teresa.
Or Marisol.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Julian’s jaw clenched.
“Where are you?”
“Tell Claire to stop looking.”
“Where are the documents?”
Teresa laughed softly.
“You still think this is about documents?”
My skin crawled.
“What do you want?” I asked.
There was silence.
Then Teresa spoke directly to me.
“I want you to understand something your mother never did.”
“What?”
“Richard Hart didn’t destroy your family.”
Her voice became cold.
“Your grandmother did.”
The call ended.
Seconds later, my phone received a photograph.
The old Malibu cottage.
Smoke poured from the windows.
May you like
And underneath it, a message.
TOO LATE.
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