Chapter 9 - THE MAN WHO WANTED REVENGE
Wade spent the night in his minivan outside the sheriff’s substation.
I learned because Deputy Mercer called.
“He says he doesn’t want anyone claiming he followed you.”
“Is he under arrest?”
“No.”
“Did the tracker create a charge?”
“That depends on jurisdiction, ownership, expectation of privacy, and prosecutorial review. He has surrendered the device data.”
“Is he safe?”
The deputy paused.
“He is angry.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“He does not appear to be an immediate danger to himself.”
I drove to the substation with Nora.
Wade sat in the driver’s seat beneath a parking-lot light. His bandaged hand rested on the wheel.
He lowered the window.
“I told you I’d leave.”
“I came for the truth.”
“You have it.”
“No. I have the portion you decided I could manage.”
He looked straight ahead.
I asked why he tracked the pickup.
He repeated that he wanted Marnie’s footage.
I asked who helped him purchase the device.
“No one.”
“Where did you get the channel’s garage code?”
Silence.
The video showed him entering a secured parking structure in Denver.
He could not have guessed the code.
“Marnie’s old roommate sent it,” he said.
“Why did she have it?”
“She dated Chase.”
That relationship had never appeared in the complaint file.
Marnie met Chase online six months before her death. They exchanged messages. Chase invited her to help with a road video.
The night of the crash may not have been a random encounter.
Marnie believed she was joining a controlled shoot.
The masks and roadblock were presented to her as staged.
Then something changed.
“Did she sign a release?” I asked.
“Chase sent one.”
“Do you have it?”
Wade opened the glove compartment and removed a printed contract.
Marnie agreed to participate in a “night pursuit simulation.” The document described professional drivers, road closures, spotters, and emergency personnel.
None were present.
My electronic signature appeared as safety administrator.
It was genuine.
I had signed a stack of releases through the production system.
I did not remember Marnie’s name.
That did not make the signature false.
The road closure permit attached to the file was forged.
I had never seen it.
“You signed,” Wade said.
“Yes.”
“You said you didn’t know.”
“I did not know the shoot occurred. I approved a controlled simulation.”
“Which became my daughter dying alone.”
“Yes.”
The word nearly broke me.
Wade looked away.
He had imagined this confrontation for two years.
Perhaps he expected denial.
My acceptance left him nowhere to place the next blow.
“Why didn’t you show investigators this before?” Nora asked.
“I did.”
“The original?”
“A copy.”
“Where is the electronic file?”
“Chase deleted the link.”
The printed release could support the case, but authentication would require platform records, metadata, or corroboration.
Wade had withheld the dating relationship because Marnie’s mother feared public judgment.
“She thought people would say Marnie asked for it,” he said.
“No one asks to be placed in uncontrolled danger.”
“You know how comments work.”
I did.
A dead young woman would be blamed for trusting creators.
A grieving father would be blamed for anger.
A businesswoman would be praised for paperwork until the paperwork showed she had signed.
I authorized Nora to turn over my release-platform records.
No selective disclosure.
No hiding documents that damaged me.
Wade studied me.
“You could lose everything.”
“I already built it on facts I refused to see.”
The reopened case expanded.
Chase became more important.
He had recruited Marnie.
Brad filmed.
Kyle directed.
I approved the risk framework.
Wade tracked and attacked.
There would be no clean courtroom where one person carried every moral burden.
Deputy Mercer received another message from Chase.
This time, it went directly to law enforcement through an attorney.
Chase was alive.
He was in Las Vegas.
He had not been abducted.
He fled because Kyle threatened to blame him for the forged documents and Marnie footage.
The blood in the motel came from smashing his face against the bathroom cabinet during a panic attack.
He took the pickup and abandoned it after noticing Wade’s tracker.
He removed the rugged-drive case but found it empty.
“Why disappear?” investigators asked through counsel.
“I needed time to copy my cloud archive.”
“Where is the archive?”
“Safe.”
“Will you surrender it?”
“Under an agreement.”
Prosecutors refused blanket immunity.
They offered a controlled proffer discussion with no promise beyond established rules.
Chase agreed.
Before the meeting, he sent one screenshot to prove value.
It showed Kyle, Brad, and Elliot standing beside the silver pickup two days before the abandonment.
A storyboard was taped to the wall.
Panel one: LENA LEFT AT GAS STATION.
Panel two: LENA ENTERS STALKER VAN.
Panel three: KYLE BEGS PUBLIC FOR HELP.
Panel four: RESCUE REVEAL.
Beneath the final panel, Brad had written:
IF SHE WON’T SIGN, EXTEND TO 72 HOURS.
The plan was not a prank that went wrong.
The prank was the cover.
The seventy-two hours were the objective.
Then Chase’s attorney called Nora privately.
“There is one more document,” she said. “A contingency plan if Lena refused the diner meeting.”
“What contingency?”
The attorney hesitated.
“A missing-person petition supported by evidence that Wade had been stalking her.”
Kyle intended to place me legally out of reach long enough to close the sale.
“What did they plan to do with me during those hours?” I asked.
May you like
The answer arrived in Chase’s own recorded words.
“Nothing,” he said. “Kyle believed Wade would do that part for us.”
