CHAPTER 8 — THE MAN UNDER THE ICE
The Coast Guard searched the lake through the night.
Divers entered the freezing water beneath portable floodlights.
I stood onshore wrapped in a blanket, staring at the black opening in the ice.
Everyone told me to return to the hospital.
I refused.
At 11:14 p.m., a diver surfaced and raised one arm.
They had found someone.
Paramedics rushed forward as the rescue team pulled a body from the water.
It was Thomas Vane.
The former police officer who helped erase Elias twenty-nine years earlier.
He had been shot in the chest.
Wyatt remained missing.
Detective Morales questioned Elias as soon as doctors stabilized him.
He remembered waking briefly at the medical facility.
Vane and Mercer were arguing.
Wyatt had escaped one restraint and attacked Vane. During the struggle, Mercer fired a gun.
Vane was struck.
Wyatt ran toward the shoreline.
Mercer followed.
Then Elias lost consciousness.
“Did you hear another shot?” Morales asked.
Elias closed his eyes.
“One.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Wyatt might have been shot before falling through the ice.
Or he might never have entered the water at all.
At dawn, officers found blood leading away from the shore toward an access road.
A nearby traffic camera captured a pickup truck leaving at 9:42 p.m.
The driver was a woman.
When the image was enhanced, I recognized her.
My mother.
Brenda had somehow escaped the hospital.
The officer guarding her room had been found locked inside a supply closet. A nurse had been threatened and forced to provide clothing.
Despite bullet wounds in her shoulder and leg, Brenda had driven more than one hundred miles to help Mercer.
Her loyalty was not to Gregory.
It was to the money.
A statewide alert was issued.
Six hours later, the pickup truck was discovered outside Toledo.
Empty.
Blood covered the passenger seat.
A motel clerk remembered seeing an injured man matching Wyatt’s description being led into a room by Brenda.
Police entered the room.
No one was there.
But Wyatt had left a message.
Written in blood on the bathroom mirror were two letters:
CP
“Could it mean Cedar Point?” an officer suggested.
“Closed property?” another asked.
I stared at the letters.
Then I remembered something Wyatt had told me months earlier.
After selling his construction company, he had kept ownership of several industrial sites. One was called Campbell Precast.
CP.
An abandoned concrete plant outside Toledo.
He was telling us where Brenda had taken him.
Police surrounded the plant before noon.
The property contained several warehouses, storage buildings, and mixing towers.
Thermal cameras detected three people inside the main production building.
Brenda.
Mercer.
Wyatt.
A fourth heat signature appeared beneath the floor.
Someone else was there.
I remained in the command vehicle while officers entered.
Through the radio, I heard commands.
“Police! Drop the weapon!”
A gunshot.
Then another.
I stopped breathing.
Minutes later, Detective Morales’s voice came through.
“Brenda is in custody.”
“What about Wyatt?”
No answer.
I grabbed the door handle.
The security guard tried to stop me, but I pushed past him.
Inside the plant, dust filled the air.
My mother lay handcuffed near a broken office window. Blood soaked through the bandage on her leg.
She saw me and laughed.
“You really think this ends with you getting everything?”
“Where is Wyatt?”
“Ask your real mother.”
“She’s dead because of you.”
Brenda’s smile disappeared.
“Rebecca was weak.”
I stepped toward her.
“You stole her child.”
“I raised you.”
“You used me.”
“I fed you. Clothed you. Gave you a home.”
“You kept my father beneath it.”
Her face twisted.
“He should have signed when Gregory first asked.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I said the one thing I knew would hurt her.
“You did all of this, and Melanie still failed.”
Brenda lunged against the officers holding her.
“You ungrateful little—”
They dragged her outside.
I followed the sound of voices deeper into the plant.
Mercer had barricaded himself inside a control room overlooking an enormous mixing chamber.
He held Wyatt in front of him with a gun pressed beneath his jaw.
Wyatt’s hands were bound.
Blood covered his shirt, but he was standing.
Alive.
Relief struck so hard I nearly collapsed.
Mercer saw me through the glass.
He activated an intercom.
“Bring Sadie upstairs.”
Morales refused.
Mercer aimed the gun toward Wyatt’s head.
“You have ten seconds.”
I moved before anyone could stop me.
The metal staircase shook beneath my feet.
When I entered the control room, Mercer locked the door behind me.
Wyatt looked at my bandages.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.”
Even then, the corner of his mouth moved.
Mercer shoved documents toward me.
“Sign the transfer.”
“You confessed to killing Rebecca.”
“Gregory ordered her death.”
“You helped.”
“I arranged a practical solution.”
“You call murder practical?”
“I call survival practical.”
Below us, officers waited for an opening.
Mercer forced the pen into my hand.
“Once you sign, I disappear. Mr. Campbell lives.”
“And if I refuse?”
He pointed toward the mixing chamber.
An old conveyor belt led to a massive industrial crusher.
“Accidents occur in abandoned factories.”
I looked at Wyatt.
His eyes moved slightly toward the control panel.
A red emergency-stop button sat three feet from him.
Mercer followed my gaze.
“Don’t.”
Wyatt drove his elbow backward into Mercer’s ribs.
The gun fired.
Glass exploded.
I grabbed Mercer’s wrist.
He struck the injured side of my face, and white pain blinded me.
Wyatt reached the emergency button, but Mercer kicked him toward the conveyor.
Wyatt fell onto the moving belt.
“Wyatt!”
The machine dragged him toward the crusher.
I bit Mercer’s hand.
He screamed and released the gun.
I grabbed it from the floor.
“Stop the belt.”
Mercer laughed through the pain.
“You won’t shoot.”
Wyatt was ten feet from the crusher.
Then eight.
Then six.
“Stop it!”
“You’re Rebecca’s daughter,” Mercer said. “Too soft.”
I aimed at his leg and fired.
He collapsed.
I slammed my hand onto the emergency-stop button.
The belt stopped with Wyatt less than two feet from the crusher.
Officers stormed the room.
Morales kicked the gun away and handcuffed Mercer.
I climbed onto the conveyor and crawled toward Wyatt.
His face was pale.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Then whose blood is on your shirt?”
“Vane’s.”
I untied his hands.
He touched the ringless finger on my left hand.
“I thought I lost you.”
“You almost did.”
His eyes filled with regret.
“I should have told you about the trust.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I understand that.”
I helped him sit up.
“We’re not discussing marriage on a conveyor belt.”
A weak laugh escaped him.
“Fair.”
Below the control room, officers discovered the source of the fourth heat signature.
A woman was locked inside a storage chamber beneath the factory.
She was in her fifties, terrified, and malnourished.
Her name was Claire Wallace.
She was the daughter of Dr. Andrew Wallace, the physician Gregory had murdered beneath the red barn.
For years, Claire had investigated her father’s disappearance.
She was the one who sent me the key.
Mercer discovered her involvement and abducted her two days earlier.
She had recordings, documents, and copies of financial ledgers proving the entire conspiracy.
Gregory.
Brenda.
Melanie.
Vane.
Mercer.
Every payment.
Every forged signature.
Every property.
Every crime.
The case was finally complete.
But as paramedics carried Mercer from the factory, he looked at me and smiled.
“You think the inheritance is waiting for you?”
Naomi stepped closer.
“What did you do?”
May you like
Mercer’s smile widened.
“Hale Medical has already been sold.”
