Chapter 4 - THE MESSAGE AFTER THE RESCUE
William called me from his attorney’s office.
His voice sounded older.
“I should have listened sooner.”
“To what?”
“Ethan said Isabella frightened him. I thought he resented her rules.”
Isabella was Ethan’s stepmother. His biological mother had died when he was four.
William had married Isabella two years later.
“She knew you were searching the house?” I asked.
“I didn’t know he was missing until the alarm.”
“Why did she need everyone to believe it?”
“I don’t know.”
He did know something.
I heard it in the pause.
Three months earlier, William discovered irregular payments from the Sterling Family Foundation. An independent audit had begun. Isabella chaired the foundation’s charity committee.
He had planned to remove her from financial authority and file for divorce after the charity dinner.
“She found out,” I said.
“I think so.”
Before he could explain further, a new email reached both of us.
It came from an anonymous account and had been scheduled before Ethan’s rescue.
Attached was a six-page trust amendment.
It transferred temporary voting control of Sterling Hospitality Group from William to Isabella if Ethan remained missing for more than forty-eight hours.
The message read:
Sign before midnight tomorrow, or the next room will not have a vent.
Ethan was safe.
The threat continued as if the sender did not know—or did not care—that we had found him.
Detective Brooks traced the email to the mansion’s internal network.
The sending device had been concealed behind layered routing.
Adrian insisted the network had been compromised externally.
Then William noticed the file name.
FINAL_VERSION_4.
Versions one through three had existed somewhere.
When police searched Isabella’s laptop, they found nothing.
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When they searched William’s study, they found Version Two in his deleted files.
It had been created under his username.
