Chapter 15 - THE EMPTY COFFIN
Charlotte demanded that Conrad explain.
He refused to speak without an attorney.
Police placed him inside a patrol car.
Roland was taken to the hospital.
Bianca remained in surgery.
Adrian had escaped through the loading dock with the metal box from the vault.
The fire was contained before it reached the guest floors.
By dawn, the Solmere lobby was filled with broken glass, standing water, and blackened flowers.
Charlotte crossed the marble where Bianca had dragged her hours earlier.
The blood had been washed away.
Elias waited beside the reception desk.
He held a sealed envelope.
“Your mother gave this to me the week before the accident.”
Charlotte accepted it.
“Why did you never send it?”
“She told me to deliver it only if you returned to the hotel wearing her ring.”
Inside was a cemetery receipt.
Eleanor had purchased a second burial plot under another name.
Margaret Stone.
Nora searched the hotel’s private records.
Margaret Stone had checked into Suite 1801 six days after Eleanor’s funeral.
The security photograph had been deleted.
Charlotte drove to the cemetery with Mason and Mara Quinn, the Vale family’s former attorney.
Mara had arrived during the night after hearing the emergency broadcast.
She carried a court order allowing the coffin to be examined.
Workers opened Eleanor’s grave.
The lid was removed.
The coffin contained bags of sand.
No body.
Charlotte stepped backward.
Mason caught her.
“My mother survived the crash.”
Mara’s face was pale.
“Possibly.”
“Why would she let me believe she was dead?”
“To protect you.”
Charlotte shook her head.
“Her death put me in more danger.”
Mara removed another document from the cemetery office.
Margaret Stone’s burial plot had never been used.
But the purchase form contained an address in a small coastal town two hundred miles away.
Charlotte drove there before sunset.
The address belonged to an abandoned Vale property overlooking the ocean.
The windows were covered.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, dust covered the furniture.
A fresh cup of tea rested on the kitchen table.
Someone had left only minutes earlier.
Charlotte searched the house.
In the upstairs bedroom, she found dozens of newspaper clippings about the Solmere Empire.
Photographs of Charlotte in Lisbon covered one wall.
Someone had been watching her for years.
Mason found a radio transmitter on the desk.
The device was still warm.
Charlotte opened the closet.
A white silk gown hung inside.
It was identical to the gown Eleanor had worn in the surveillance footage.
A photograph was pinned to the fabric.
It showed Eleanor after the crash.
Her face was bruised.
She was alive.
Words had been written beneath the photograph.
CHARLOTTE MUST NEVER FIND ME BEFORE ADRIAN DOES.
The floorboard behind them creaked.
Charlotte turned.
A woman stood in the doorway.
A scar crossed the left side of her face.
Her hair had turned almost completely gray.
May you like
But Charlotte recognized her eyes.
“Mom?”
