CHAPTER 5: HIS FATHER DIDN'T DIE IN AN ACCIDENT... HE WAS THE FIRST VICTIM
The evidence room was silent.
Detective Laura Hayes carefully placed the faded photograph on the table.
Ethan couldn't take his eyes off it.
His father, Michael Brooks, was smiling beside Pastor Daniel Carter as if they were lifelong friends.
That made no sense.
His father had always claimed he barely knew the pastor.
Then Laura slid another file across the table.
"We reopened your father's accident."
Inside were photographs Ethan had never seen.
The brakes on Michael's car...
Had been cut.
For twenty-three years, everyone believed rain had caused the fatal crash.
But modern forensic technology revealed clean tool marks on the brake lines.
Someone hadn't wanted Michael to survive.
Ethan's hands shook.
"So my father was murdered..."
Laura nodded.
"And we believe your mother figured it out."
Everything suddenly made sense.
The nervous phone calls.
The hidden letters.
The sudden change to Eleanor's will.
She wasn't protecting her money.
She was protecting her son.
The detectives searched Daniel's church one final time.
Beneath the old wooden altar, they discovered a hidden underground room.
Dust covered dozens of locked filing cabinets.
Inside were records dating back over twenty-five years.
Each folder belonged to a different family.
Each family had suffered a mysterious death shortly before a massive inheritance changed hands.
Some victims had died in house fires.
Some in boating accidents.
Some from unexplained medical emergencies.
Every case had been ruled accidental.
Until now.
Daniel hadn't been running a church.
He had been running a criminal empire disguised as faith.
As investigators continued searching, Ethan noticed something strange carved into the concrete wall.
A single date.
October 18, 1998.
The day his father died.
Below it were three words scratched deeply into the stone:
"Witness Still Alive."
Detective Hayes frowned.
"Michael wasn't the only witness."
Ethan looked up.
"If my father wasn't alone..."
"Then someone else survived."
Laura slowly closed the file.
"We've already found them."
She pulled out an old driver's license.
The woman in the photograph looked older now...
But Ethan recognized her instantly.
She had attended his mother's funeral.
She had hugged him.
She had cried beside him.
She had whispered,
"I'm so sorry for your loss."
Her real name wasn't the one Ethan had known.
She had been living under a false identity for more than twenty years.
And according to the detective...
She had just disappeared again less than twelve hours earlier.
Somewhere out there...
The last living witness to his father's murder was running for her life.
May you like
And whoever was hunting her...
Had already learned that Ethan was searching too.
