CHAPTER 4 — THE HOUSE ON MILLER ROAD
Rachel grabbed my wrist and pulled me beneath the interrogation table.
“Stay down.”
Grant struck the door once.
Then twice.
The lock held.
“Emma,” he called, sounding almost gentle, “you’re forcing this to become ugly.”
Rachel opened a hidden compartment in her briefcase and removed a compact metal tool.
“What is that?” I whispered.
“Something my profession strongly discourages.”
She inserted it into the cuff around my wrist.
Two seconds later, the metal opened.
“You can pick handcuffs?”
“I had an unusual childhood.”
Smoke thickened beneath the door.
A third gunshot sounded in the hallway.
Rachel moved toward the back wall and examined the ventilation grille.
“We need another exit.”
“That vent is too small.”
“Not the vent.”
She pressed along the wall beside it until a thin panel shifted.
Behind it was an old service corridor barely wide enough for one person.
“How did you know that was there?”
“I reviewed the building plans before coming.”
“You expected an attack?”
“I expected corruption. Attacks are less predictable.”
The interrogation-room door splintered.
Rachel pushed me into the passage.
“Move.”
We crawled through darkness while smoke burned my throat. Behind us, the door crashed open.
Grant shouted my name.
The service corridor ended behind a storage cabinet in an evidence room. Rachel pushed it aside, and we slipped into a hallway near the station’s rear exit.
A young officer lay unconscious near the wall.
I knelt beside him.
“He’s breathing.”
Rachel checked his pulse.
“Then we leave him.”
“We can’t.”
“We can’t help your son if we’re dead.”
The truth of it forced me to stand.
We reached the rear parking lot and climbed into Rachel’s black sedan.
She drove without headlights until we were three blocks away.
“Where are my parents?” I asked.
“I arranged for federal agents to retrieve them when I learned you had been arrested.”
“Did they?”
Rachel checked her phone.
“No confirmation.”
“Call them.”
“My secure contact isn’t responding.”
I reached for my confiscated phone before remembering the police still had it.
“Drive to the house.”
“That’s exactly where Grant expects you to go.”
“Leo is there.”
Rachel turned sharply onto a side street.
“Then we approach carefully.”
When we reached my parents’ neighborhood, emergency vehicles crowded the street.
Their house was on fire.
Flames poured from the kitchen windows.
I opened the car door before Rachel fully stopped.
“Emma!”
I ran.
Firefighters dragged hoses across the lawn. Neighbors stood behind the yellow tape. I searched every face.
No Leo.
No mother.
No father.
A firefighter grabbed me.
“You can’t go in there.”
“My son is inside!”
“The house was empty when we arrived.”
“Are you sure?”
“We searched the first floor. The basement stairs collapsed.”
I looked toward the black smoke rising above the roof.
Rachel appeared beside me and showed the firefighter her credentials.
“When was the fire reported?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“Who called?”
“Anonymous.”
I turned toward the driveway.
Grant’s SUV was gone.
So were my parents’ vehicles.
On the grass near the mailbox, something reflected the firelight.
A small metal button.
I picked it up.
It bore a gold eagle.
The same emblem Leo had seen on the intruder’s sleeve.
Rachel crouched beside me.
“Security company?”
“Yes.”
She placed the button in an evidence bag.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I forced myself to think.
Leo had the flash drive.
Grant believed I knew where Leo was.
That meant he had not captured him yet.
At least, I prayed he hadn’t.
A voice came from behind us.
“Emma?”
I turned.
My mother emerged from the crowd with soot streaking her face.
I ran to her.
“Where’s Leo?”
“He’s safe.”
“Where?”
My father appeared behind her, his injured arm bandaged.
He looked exhausted but alive.
“Not here,” he said. “We need to go.”
Rachel led us back to her car.
Once the doors were locked, my mother explained.
After the police took me, Grant remained outside the house. He tried to convince my parents to surrender Leo to him temporarily.
My father refused.
Ten minutes later, the electricity went out.
Then someone began forcing the basement door.
My mother took Leo through the storm-cellar exit and ran across three backyards. My father followed after setting off the silent alarm.
“Where is Leo now?” I asked.
“With Mrs. Alvarez.”
I remembered our former neighbor, Rosa Alvarez, who had lived two streets away when I was a teenager.
“She still lives here?”
“She moved to her sister’s farm outside town,” my mother said. “Leo is with her.”
“Grant will find him.”
“Not easily,” my father replied. “Rosa gave us another address.”
He handed Rachel a scrap of paper.
Rachel entered it into her navigation system.
“Miller Road,” she said. “Thirty-six minutes away.”
The name caught my attention.
“Miller?”
Rachel looked at me.
“That was your birth name.”
My mother lowered her gaze.
“Rosa knew your biological mother.”
The car became silent.
“What?”
My father stared out the window.
My mother reached toward me but stopped before touching my hand.
“Your biological mother was Rosa’s younger sister.”
I felt as if the air had been punched from my lungs.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“All these years?”
“Yes.”
“Was she alive when you adopted me?”
My mother shook her head.
“Her name was Julia Miller. She died when you were ten months old.”
“How?”
“A car accident.”
Rachel and I exchanged a look.
My mother saw it.
“No,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t connected to Grant. It happened before we knew him well.”
“You knew Grant your entire marriage.”
“I mean before he became involved in the company.”
My father rubbed his forehead.
“We should have told you.”
“You should have told me a lot of things.”
Rachel drove faster.
The address led us beyond the town limits, through miles of dark farmland. Eventually, we turned onto an unpaved road that ended at an abandoned white farmhouse surrounded by bare trees.
No lights were visible.
My father frowned.
“This isn’t Rosa’s farm.”
We stepped from the car.
The night was silent.
Too silent.
Rachel removed a small handgun from her glove compartment.
My mother looked surprised.
“You’re an attorney.”
“I contain multitudes.”
We approached the farmhouse.
The front door stood slightly open.
Inside, furniture was covered with sheets. Dust coated the floor.
“Leo?” I called.
No answer.
Then I heard a faint tapping beneath us.
Three taps.
Pause.
Three more.
I recognized it.
Our emergency signal.
“He’s downstairs.”
We found a cellar door hidden beneath a rug in the pantry.
I pulled it open.
Leo stood at the bottom of the steps holding a heavy flashlight like a weapon.
Behind him was Rosa Alvarez.
Her hair had turned completely white, but I recognized her warm brown eyes.
“Emma,” she breathed.
Leo ran up the stairs.
I dropped to my knees and held him so tightly he complained he couldn’t breathe.
I kissed his face again and again.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did anyone follow you?”
“Mrs. Alvarez changed cars twice.”
Rosa climbed the stairs.
“I learned caution from my sister.”
I stood.
“My biological mother.”
Rosa nodded.
“You have her eyes.”
My parents remained near the pantry entrance, ashamed and uncertain.
Rachel closed the cellar door.
“We cannot stay here long.”
Rosa looked at her.
“You’re Charles’s attorney.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know what this house is.”
Rachel scanned the covered furniture.
“No.”
Rosa removed an old key from around her neck.
“This was Julia’s house.”
My heart tightened.
“She lived here?”
“For a few months before she died.”
Rosa walked toward the fireplace and inserted the key into a small hole beneath the mantel.
A panel opened.
Behind it was a metal box.
She placed it on the table.
“Julia knew she was in danger,” Rosa said.
My father looked confused.
“You said her death was an accident.”
“That’s what the police decided.”
Rosa’s eyes hardened.
“I never believed them.”
She opened the box.
Inside were photographs, cassette tapes, newspaper clippings, and a leather journal.
On top lay a photograph of my biological mother holding me as a baby.
Beside her stood Samuel Walker—my adoptive grandfather.
My father stared at the photograph.
“What was Dad doing with Julia?”
Rosa looked at him.
“You were told Emma was a stranger your father asked you to adopt.”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t a stranger.”
Rosa turned the photograph over.
Samuel had written a message on the back.
PROTECT MY DAUGHTER.
My father gripped the table.
“Daughter?”
Rosa faced me.
“Emma, Samuel Walker was your biological father.”
The room spun.
That meant I had not been biologically related to Ethan as a sibling.
But Samuel was his grandfather.
I was Ethan’s biological aunt.
I stepped backward, nearly falling.
My mother caught me.
“No,” I whispered.
Rosa’s face filled with pain.
“Samuel had an affair with Julia’s mother many years before. Julia was his secret daughter. When Julia died, he arranged for Robert and Helen to adopt you.”
Leo looked frightened.
“Does that change who my dad was?”
I could not answer.
Rachel did.
“It means Ethan was Emma’s biological nephew, though they were close in age and raised believing they were siblings.”
The words were unbearable.
My father slammed his fist on the table.
“My father knew?”
“Yes,” Rosa said.
“And he let us raise them together?”
“He believed the secret would protect Emma from Grant.”
“Protect her from what?”
Rosa opened Julia’s journal.
“From being the true controlling heir of Walker Medical Technologies.”
Rachel stepped closer.
“I thought the trust passed through the grandchildren.”
“It did,” Rosa replied. “But only if Samuel had no surviving child.”
She looked at me.
“Emma is Samuel’s youngest biological child.”
The meaning struck all of us at once.
Leo was not the primary heir.
I was.
Before I could speak, headlights appeared through the dirty front windows.
Several vehicles stopped outside.
Rachel turned off her flashlight.
Rosa closed the metal box.
A man’s voice called from the porch.
“Emma Grace Miller.”
It was not Grant.
The voice was older.
Unsteady.
My father moved toward the window.
A tall man stepped into the moonlight.
His face was scarred along one side, and he walked with a cane.
My father whispered, “Charles.”
The man raised both hands.
“I came alone.”
Rachel looked through a gap in the curtain.
“No, you didn’t.”
Dark figures moved among the trees.
Charles looked over his shoulder.
Then back at the house.
His voice became urgent.
“Those aren’t my people.”
The first bullet shattered the front window.
Charles dropped to the ground.
Rachel pushed us toward the cellar.
“Everyone down!”
Gunfire erupted around the farmhouse.
May you like
And from somewhere outside, Grant shouted through a loudspeaker.
“Emma, bring me the trust documents, or I burn your mother’s house to the ground with all of you inside.”
