Chapter 3: Everything She Knew
The folder held eleven pages.
Bank statements.
Wire transfers.
A photograph of Mark shaking hands with a man I didn't recognize outside a parking garage.
And at the back, a single handwritten note on a torn piece of paper.
*If anything happens to me, give this to her.*
Rachel's name was at the top.
My name was at the bottom.
"What is this?" I said.
"The man in the photograph," Rachel said, "is not Malcolm."
I looked at the photo again.
The man was older.
Heavy shoulders.
A gray suit.
"Then who is he?"
"His name is Victor Hale." Rachel sat forward.
"He runs a private medical supply network out of three states.
Mark has been his distributor for four years."
Mark was still standing by the window.
He hadn't moved.
"Mark," I said.
"Say something."
He turned.
His eyes went to Rachel first, then to me.
"I was going to get out," he said.
"I had a plan."
"A plan." I set the photograph down.
"Our daughter was sedated at her own birthday party and you had a plan."
"That wasn't supposed to happen." His voice cracked.
"Emma was never supposed to be involved."
"Then what was supposed to happen?"
He pressed his hand against the back of a chair and didn't answer.
Rachel answered for him.
"Malcolm was going to collect from Mark that weekend," she said.
"Mark owed him sixty thousand dollars.
Malcolm had already told two people that if Mark didn't pay, he was going to make an example of him.
In front of his family."
The kitchen felt very small.
"So Emma—" I started.
"I made the lemonade," Rachel said.
"I put the sedative in her cup.
A small dose.
Enough to get her to the hospital.
Enough to get police in the house before Malcolm's people arrived."
I stared at her.
"You dr*gged my daughter to protect her."
"I dr*gged your daughter to get her out of the room before something worse happened." Rachel's voice didn't waver.
"I know what that looks like.
I know what you think of me right now.
But Malcolm's associate was parked outside this house at four in the afternoon.
I had forty minutes."
I looked at the handwritten note again.
*If anything happens to me, give this to her.*
"You thought something was going to happen to you," I said.
"I thought it was possible."
"Why didn't you call the police yourself?"
"Because Mark begged me not to." She looked at him.
Not with anger.
With something older than that.
"He said he could fix it.
He said he just needed one more week."
Mark sat down heavily in the chair.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It came out barely above a whisper.
I picked up the photograph of Victor Hale.
I looked at it for a long time.
"Who else knows about this man?"
Rachel reached into the back of the folder and pulled out one more page.
It was a list of names.
Twelve of them.
Dates beside each one.
"I've been collecting this for two years," she said.
"Every transaction I could document.
Every name Mark gave me when he was scared enough to talk."
I set the page down on the table between us.
Outside, a car passed slowly on the street.
May you like
We all heard it.
None of us moved until it was gone.
