Chapter 6 - The Accident That Wasn’t Simple
The officer’s name was Calvin Ross.
He had retired from the county sheriff’s department eight months after Nina Cole’s crash and taken a job as head of security for Dane Development Group.
Detective Owens did not call it proof of anything.
But she stopped calling Nina’s death an ordinary accident.
Mark sat in silence while Owens laid out the timeline.
Chloe vanished in May.
Rebecca was threatened in June.
Nina died in August.
Mark resigned from Merritt in September.
Victor Dane bought out the other owners in November.
“Did you resign because of Nina?” I asked.
Mark nodded.
“I should’ve left sooner.”
“You should’ve gone to the police sooner.”
“I know.”
Daniel Shaw sat across from us.
He had been released without charges after investigators concluded Mark’s injury happened during the struggle over the phone, not from a deliberate attack.
He still hated Mark.
I could see it in every muscle of his face.
But now he hated someone else more.
“Where is Dane?” Daniel asked.
Owens answered. “At his attorney’s office. He’s cooperating through counsel.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“Of course he is.”
Then Owens placed a printed photograph on the table.
It showed Nina’s car after the crash.
The driver-side door was crushed.
The front end was mangled.
Nothing unusual to me.
Mark leaned closer.
“What?” I asked.
He pointed at the passenger window.
“There.”
A small white sticker was visible in the lower corner.
“Parking permit,” Mark said. “Merritt warehouse.”
Owens nodded.
“The vehicle was photographed two days before the crash in a security image from a motel forty miles away.”
She slid over another photo.
Nina was getting out of the car.
A second person sat in the passenger seat.
Dark hair.
Thin face.
Daniel stood so fast his chair fell backward.
“Chloe.”
No one moved.
If Chloe had been with Nina two days before the accident, then she had still been alive three months after everyone believed she vanished.
Daniel stared at Mark.
“She was alive.”
Mark whispered, “Yes.”
Daniel turned to Owens. “Where was the motel?”
“Outside Franklin.”
He looked at me.
“Why would Chloe be in Franklin?”
I did not know.
But Mark did.
His face told me before he spoke.
“There’s an old Merritt records warehouse there.”
Owens’s eyes narrowed.
“What kind of records?”
May you like
Mark swallowed.
“The kind Victor thought had been destroyed.”
