Chapter 2 - Ghosts of the Past
Two hours later, Eli was settled in a secure room under protective police watch. I sat in the corner chair, staring at my phone. My thumb hovered over a contact labeled simply “V. Vanguard.”
Before I met Daniel, before I convinced myself I wanted a quiet, domestic life in suburban Chicago, I was Mara Vance. I was a senior intelligence investigator for a private crisis-management firm that dealt with corrupted executives, black-market blackmail, and high-profile predators who thought money made them invisible. I had retired when my first husband died, wanting to give Eli a normal childhood.
I had pretended to be helpless. I had let Daniel pay the bills and manage the household because I wanted to believe in a fairytale. But while Daniel thought he was grooming a fragile widow, my old instincts had never truly died. For the past six months, as Eli withdrew deeper into his shell, I had secretly begun collecting evidence on Daniel’s strange late-night disappearances and hidden financial transfers.
I pressed call.
“Mara?” a deep, gravelly voice answered on the second ring. Vance. My old director. “It’s been five years.”
“Vance, I need a safe house, an encrypted server, and a forensic team,” I said without preamble.
Silence on the line for two seconds. “Who is the target?”
“My husband, Daniel Pierce. He touched my son, Vance. And he infected him.” My voice didn’t break; it turned to ice.
May you like
Vance’s breath hitched. “Give me thirty minutes. I’ll clear a secure floor at the Drake Hotel under an alias. Mara… does he know who you really are?”
“He thinks I’m a broken woman who needs his permission to breathe,” I replied. “He’s about to find out he married a nightmare.”
