CHAPTER 4 – The Woman in the Coffin Wasn't My Wife
The church stood frozen.
No one dared speak.
Ethan stared at Agent Rebecca Hayes, convinced he had misheard.
"What did you just say?"
She met his eyes.
"The body buried six years ago... wasn't your wife."
The world tilted beneath his feet.
"I buried her myself."
"You buried a closed coffin," Rebecca corrected softly. "You were never allowed to see the body."
The memory crashed back.
The funeral...
The sealed casket...
His mother's desperate insistence.
"Don't open it. Remember her the way she was."
At the time, grief had blinded him.
Now...
Every lie suddenly made sense.
Rebecca slid a thin file into his hands.
"Three months ago, a former nurse contacted the FBI."
Inside the folder was a photograph.
A hospital security image.
The date matched the night Ethan's wife, Lily, had supposedly died.
The photo showed Lily...
Alive.
Weak.
Holding her newborn daughter.
Two men wheeled her through a back hospital exit while Ethan's mother stood nearby, signing paperwork.
Ethan's heart nearly stopped.
"My mother..."
Rebecca nodded.
"She paid everyone."
Doctors.
Security guards.
Funeral directors.
Even the coroner.
The accident had never killed Lily.
It had simply erased her.
The little girl squeezed Ethan's hand.
"I told Mommy you'd believe me someday."
Tears filled his eyes.
"You've seen her?"
The little girl smiled.
"Not for a long time."
"She always visited me at night."
"Only after everyone else was asleep."
The church fell silent again.
Rebecca slowly knelt beside the little girl.
"Sweetheart..."
"When was the last time you saw your mother?"
The child thought carefully.
"Three weeks ago."
Everyone gasped.
Ethan grabbed Rebecca's arm.
"Three weeks?"
Rebecca's expression hardened.
"That means she's alive."
Hope exploded inside Ethan's chest.
For six years, he'd believed he had lost everything.
Now there was a chance.
A real chance.
Just then...
Rebecca's phone buzzed.
She answered.
Her face drained of color.
"What happened?"
Silence.
Then...
"No... don't lose her."
She ended the call and looked at Ethan.
"They found Lily."
His heart leaped.
"Where is she?"
Rebecca swallowed.
"In an abandoned mountain cabin."
"She was barely conscious."
"But..."
She hesitated.
"What?"
Rebecca's voice trembled.
"When our agents arrived..."
"...the cabin was already on fire."
Ethan didn't wait another second.
He grabbed his daughter's hand and ran from the church.
Police cars screamed through the streets.
Helicopters lifted into the sky.
The race against time had begun.
Miles away...
Flames consumed the lonely cabin.
Inside, a woman lay trapped beneath a collapsed wooden beam.
Smoke filled the room.
She could barely breathe.
Around her neck hung the wedding ring Ethan had placed on her finger six years earlier.
With her last remaining strength...
She whispered one word.
"Ethan..."
Outside the burning cabin...
A black SUV slowly pulled away.
In the back seat sat a man no one had seen before.
He watched the fire through dark sunglasses.
Then smiled.
"She should have died six years ago."
He closed his phone after sending a single message.
Target eliminated.
But he never noticed...
A weak hand suddenly emerged from the burning wreckage.
Someone...
May you like
Was still alive.
To be continued in Chapter 5...
