Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW WHERE THE BODIES WERE
The first bullet missed me by less than six feet.
I never saw it.
I heard the window explode, felt Leah’s hand slam into my shoulder, and hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
Aisha crawled behind the kitchen island while Leah drew her weapon.
“Stay down!”
Another shot punched through the wall.
Drywall dust filled the air.
The baby kicked violently.
My hands flew to my stomach.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, though I had no idea whether I was speaking to her or myself.
Outside, agents shouted coordinates. Tires screamed. Someone fired back.
Then silence.
The kind of silence that does not feel empty.
The kind that feels like someone is still aiming.
Leah moved to the shattered window, staying below the frame.
“Shooter’s moving east!” a voice yelled through her radio.
A moment later, engines roared away in the distance.
The entire attack lasted maybe forty seconds.
My body remembered it as hours.
Leah came back to me.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Cramping?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer changed everything.
Within fifteen minutes I was in another vehicle, headed toward a hospital under armed escort. Leah came with me despite protests from two supervisors who appeared at the scene. She refused to hand me off until an obstetrician confirmed the baby was stable.
The heartbeat sounded strong.
One hundred forty-seven beats per minute.
I cried when I heard it.
Not quietly.
Not gracefully.
I cried with both hands covering my face while a nurse rubbed my shoulder and Leah stared at the floor because she knew I did not want anyone watching me fall apart.
When the doctor left, I said, “They found us in less than a day.”
“Yes.”
“Only a few people knew the location.”
“Yes.”
“So the voicemail was right.”
Leah did not answer.
I looked at her.
“Somebody inside is helping them.”
“Maybe.”
“Stop saying maybe.”
Her expression hardened.
“If I say yes without proof, I start making decisions based on fear. That gets people killed.”
“Fear kept me alive in a hole.”
“No. Your decisions kept you alive. Fear was just screaming while you made them.”
I hated how much sense that made.
She sat down beside the hospital bed.
“The two exterior agents are alive. One took a round through the shoulder. Shooter fired from a wooded lot behind the house. Stolen vehicle recovered five miles away.”
“Cameras?”
“Disabled three minutes before the attack.”
“How?”
“Remote access using valid credentials.”
There it was.
Not proof of a traitor.
But close.
Leah’s phone rang. She answered, listened, then stood.
“Say that again.”
Her eyes shifted toward me.
“When?”
Another pause.
“I’ll call you back.”
She ended the call.
“What happened?”
“Diana Mercer is gone.”
I sat up.
“Gone where?”
“Her house is empty. Car is there. Purse is there. Phone is on the kitchen counter.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Or running.”
“Why leave the phone?”
“She may have another.”
My mind flashed to the dining room recordings.
Diana laughing about crime sounding administrative.
Diana standing behind Samuel Creed.
Diana’s curtains moving across the street.
“She knew about the card,” I said.
“Maybe.”
I gave Leah a look.
“Fine. Probably.”
It was the closest thing to humor either of us managed.
The hospital transferred me to a private recovery room under an alias. Two agents stood outside the door. A nurse brought soup I did not eat.
At 2:13 a.m., someone knocked.
Three slow taps.
My entire body stiffened.
One of the agents opened the door halfway.
A tiny elderly woman stood in the hallway wearing slippers and a wool coat over a flowered nightgown.
I recognized her immediately.
Mrs. Bell.
She lived three houses down from me on Elmwood Drive.
Eighty-one years old, widowed, hard of hearing when she wanted to be, and sharper than any person I had ever met.
“I need to see her,” she said.
The agent replied, “Ma’am, this is a secure floor.”
“I know. I followed the black government SUV.”
I almost laughed.
Leah appeared behind the agent.
“How did you get in here?”
Mrs. Bell looked offended.
“I used the elevator.”
Leah closed her eyes briefly.
“Search her.”
Mrs. Bell spread her arms.
“Young lady, at my age, dignity is mostly theoretical. Go ahead.”
Five minutes later, she sat beside my bed drinking terrible hospital coffee.
“You should not be here,” I told her.
“Neither should you.”
“Fair.”
She set down the cup.
“I saw the men who buried you.”
Every sound in the room disappeared.
Leah stepped closer.
“What did you say?”
Mrs. Bell looked at me, not Leah.
“The night Arthur put you in the garden, I was awake. Arthritis. Couldn’t sleep. I saw headlights at your back gate around one in the morning.”
My mouth went dry.
The prosecution had established that Arthur had help, but only one accomplice—his project manager, Dale Whitcomb—had been identified with certainty. Arthur refused to name the others. The darkness and my position in the ground had prevented me from seeing clearly.
“How many?” Leah asked.
“Four men. Two women.”
My skin prickled.
“Six people?”
Mrs. Bell nodded.
“Arthur. Dale. Councilman Voss. A man I didn’t know. Diana Mercer. And Rachel Sloane.”
The attorney from the Dinner Club.
I felt suddenly sick.
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
Mrs. Bell’s eyes filled with shame.
“I tried.”
“What do you mean?”
“The next morning, before they found you, I called the non-emergency line. Said I’d seen people in your yard at night.”
Leah’s expression sharpened.
“Do you remember who took the report?”
“A detective came to my house. Name was Corbin. Tall fellow. Gray at the temples.”
Leah went still.
“Thomas Corbin?”
“Yes.”
I knew the name.
Supervisory Special Agent Thomas Corbin had testified at Arthur’s federal sentencing hearing. He had praised Leah’s work. He had stood ten feet from me and said my courage helped expose one of the largest municipal fraud networks in the region.
Mrs. Bell continued.
“He asked what I saw. I told him. Then he said it was probably landscaping contractors and that I should stay out of the Holloways’ marriage.”
Leah’s face had changed completely.
“Corbin wasn’t assigned to local police.”
Mrs. Bell blinked.
“Well, he had a badge.”
“Federal?”
“I don’t know the difference.”
Leah pulled out her phone.
“Describe him.”
Mrs. Bell did.
It was Corbin.
The person inside.
Not a theory anymore.
A name.
Leah walked to the far side of the room and made a call I could not hear. Mrs. Bell reached for my hand.
“There’s more.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Two weeks after you were rescued, Diana came to my house.”
My grip tightened around hers.
“She knew I had called someone. She brought muffins.”
That was so Diana it made my stomach turn.
“She sat in my kitchen and told me people who confused themselves with witnesses sometimes became defendants. Then she showed me photographs of my grandson leaving a bar after drinking.”
“Blackmail.”
“I suppose.”
“Why come forward now?”
Mrs. Bell looked toward the door where Leah was still speaking urgently.
“Because Diana came back tonight.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“At eleven-thirty. She used my side gate. She was crying. I had never seen Diana Mercer cry. She gave me this.”
Mrs. Bell reached inside her coat.
Both agents at the door reacted instantly.
“Hands!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Slowly, she removed a house key taped to a folded piece of paper.
Leah returned.
“What is that?”
Mrs. Bell handed it to her.
The paper contained an address.
Not on Elmwood Drive.
An abandoned historic farmhouse outside the city.
“Diana said if anything happened to her, I should give this to the woman Arthur buried.”
My heart pounded.
“Did she say why?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Bell looked directly at me.
“She said, ‘Tell her Samuel Creed is alive.’”
Leah’s eyes widened.
Mrs. Bell continued.
“And then she said, ‘Tell her Arthur never kept the real ledger. Samuel did.’”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Leah’s phone buzzed.
A message.
She read it and swore.
“What?” I asked.
“Corbin didn’t report to work today.”
“Can you find him?”
“We’re trying.”
Mrs. Bell reached for her coffee again as if we were discussing weather.
“I can save you the trouble.”
Leah stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I saw him tonight too.”
“Where?”
Mrs. Bell took one slow sip.
“Driving out of Diana Mercer’s garage.”
Leah’s voice dropped.
“What was he driving?”
“Her husband’s old green Range Rover.”
“Direction?”
“North.”
Toward the farmhouse.
Leah immediately ordered a tactical team to move.
I pushed back my blanket.
She turned.
“No.”
“I’m coming.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Diana left the key for me.”
“She left the key to keep you alive, not turn you into a field agent.”
“I’m the one Samuel might trust.”
“He has never met you.”
“He knows what Arthur did to me. If he’s been hiding for more than a year, he may not trust the FBI. Especially if Corbin is dirty.”
Leah looked at me for a long moment.
“No.”
I saw the decision in her face.
So I did something I had learned from living with Arthur.
I stopped arguing.
Twenty minutes later, while Leah coordinated with her team, Mrs. Bell leaned close to me.
“There’s another way into that farmhouse,” she whispered.
I stared at her.
“How do you know?”
“My husband grew up there.”
She drew a rough map on the back of a hospital menu.
A service road.
An old root cellar.
A tunnel beneath the kitchen.
“You are full of surprises,” I whispered.
“At eighty-one, dear, surprises are what you have left.”
I folded the map and slipped it into my robe pocket.
I did not intend to leave the hospital.
Not then.
But ten minutes later, every agent outside my room received the same emergency alert on their radios.
Shots fired at the farmhouse.
Officer down.
Leah ran for the elevator.
And as the doors closed behind her, my hospital room phone began to ring.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then came a weak male voice.
“Is this Arthur Holloway’s wife?”
My blood turned cold.
“Yes.”
He inhaled painfully.
“My name is Samuel Creed.”
I gripped the receiver.
“Where are you?”
A crash sounded behind him.
Then he whispered four words that changed everything.
May you like
“Your husband is coming home.”
The line went dead.
