CHAPTER 4 — The Woman In The Sunset
Six months passed.
The arrests dominated national headlines.
The trafficking network had fallen.
Or so everyone believed.
Life inside the mountain cabin slowly became something Ethan thought he'd never experience again.
Peace.
Emma and Ella finally laughed.
They planted flowers beside Olivia's grave.
They painted the old porch together.
Sometimes they even argued over whose turn it was to feed the chickens Ethan had bought for them.
For the first time in years...
The cabin sounded alive.
Yet every evening, precisely as the sun disappeared behind the Blue Ridge Mountains...
The white flower appeared.
Always fresh.
Always resting on the same weathered bench.
No footprints.
No fingerprints.
Nothing.
The FBI eventually stopped investigating.
"It's probably someone honoring Olivia."
That became the official explanation.
Ethan tried to believe it.
Until one October evening.
He saw her.
Not clearly.
Just a silhouette.
A woman wearing the exact gray sweater Olivia had owned.
She stood beside the bench for only a second before disappearing into the trees.
"Ethan..."
Emma whispered beside him.
"She looked back."
His blood froze.
Because Olivia had always turned the same way whenever he called her name.
The next morning Ethan searched the trail.
Near the bench...
He found fresh boot prints.
Not hiking boots.
Military boots.
Someone had been watching them.
Hidden beneath a flat stone nearby was a small metal capsule.
Inside...
A memory card.
Nothing else.
No note.
No fingerprints.
When FBI forensic analysts opened the files...
Everyone inside the lab fell silent.
The videos had been recorded only three weeks earlier.
Someone was still running the trafficking operation.
The people arrested...
Hadn't been the leaders.
They had merely been expendable.
At the end of the final video...
A masked man looked directly into the camera.
"If Ethan Brooks finds this..."
May you like
"...tell him Olivia almost stopped us."
"Almost."
