Chapter 6 - Shadows of the DeceasedBullets didn't fly—this wasn't a movie—but the sheer terrifying force of two heavy federal SUVs pursuing us through the tight grid of the city's industrial district was enough to make my blood run cold.
I slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel, and threw the car into drive, sweeping into a narrow alleyway behind an abandoned meatpacking plant. The Audi’s high-performance engine surged, throwing us forward and putting three blocks of distance between us and the sirens.
“Clara!” my mother sobbed, clutching the dashboard. “Where are we going? We can’t run forever! You’re a lawyer, you’ll lose your license!”
“I won't lose anything if I prove the truth, Mom,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on the road as I navigated through the labyrinth of side streets, avoiding the main avenues where police traffic cameras were stationed. “Jonathan made one massive mistake.”
“What mistake?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“He called me,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket and setting it on the dashboard. “He thought he was being dramatic. He thought he was playing the mastermind. But every call to my professional line is automatically recorded and transcribed by my law firm’s cloud server.”
I tapped the screen, pulling up the digital audio log. The call was there—a full two minutes of Jonathan Vance’s voice, clear as day, boasting about framing my mother and admitting that Arthur was just a pawn.
“That’s proof!” my mother said, a glimmer of hope returning to her eyes.
“It’s proof his voice exists,” I corrected her grimly. “But legally, Jonathan Vance is dead. A court can’t issue an arrest warrant for a ghost without physical, biological proof of life, or a confirmed location. If I take this recording to the FBI right now, Jonathan’s lawyers will claim it’s an AI-generated voice clone created by us to distract from your ten-million-dollar wire charge.”
“So what do we do?”
I turned the car onto a quiet, tree-lined street in the old residential district of the city, pulling into the driveway of a small, faded Victorian house with overgrown bushes and dark windows.
“We go see the one person who knows where Jonathan’s body isn't,” I said.
My mother looked out the window, her eyes widening in realization. “Is this... Dr. Thorne’s house?”
Dr. Edward Thorne had been the family physician for thirty years. He was the man who signed Jonathan Vance’s death certificate in 2016, citing a fatal myocardial infarction. He was also the man whose private medical clinic had received a $2 million ‘charitable donation’ from Vance Logistics six months after Jonathan’s supposed death.
I turned off the car engine. The silence inside the vehicle was deafening.
“Wait here,” I told my mother, pulling a heavy brass paperweight out of my briefcase and slipping it into my coat pocket.
“Clara, be careful!” she pleaded.
I stepped out into the freezing air, walking up the creaky wooden steps of Dr. Thorne’s front porch. The house looked abandoned, the shades pulled down tight.
I knocked on the heavy oak door. Three sharp raps.
Silence.
I knocked again, harder this time. “Dr. Thorne! It’s Clara Vance. I know you’re in there. And I know about the death certificate.”
A moment later, the lock clicked. The door creaked open an inch, held by a brass security chain. A pale, sunken face appeared in the shadow—Dr. Thorne, looking twenty years older than when I last saw him, his eyes wide with paranoia.
“Clara... you shouldn't be here,” he whispered, his breath smelling heavily of bourbon. “They’re watching the house. You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving, Edward,” I said, shoving my foot into the door frame so he couldn't close it. “The IRS just arrested Arthur. The FBI is looking for my mother. And Jonathan just called my phone. He’s alive, and you signed a fraudulent death certificate.”
Dr. Thorne let out a dry, rattling laugh. “Fraudulent? You think I had a choice? Jonathan Vance didn't ask me to sign that paper, Clara. He put a gun to my grandson’s head and told me to sign it, or my family would disappear into the river!”
May you like
I froze. “Where is he, Edward?”
The old doctor looked around the empty street, his hands trembling violently. “He never left the city, Clara. He’s been living right under your noses the entire time.”
