Chapter 16 - The Crushed Sedan
"Chloe!" I screamed into the phone, but only the hollow hum of a disconnected line answered.
"Trace the call!" Ethan barked into his intercom, alerting his tech specialist down the hall. "Call emergency services right now! Vehicle collision, vicinity of the St. Regis Hotel parking garage or adjoining streets!"
Uncle Thomas and Dad bolted to their feet. Dad looked as if he had been struck by lightning. Despite the cruel humiliation Chloe and Diane had inflicted on him over the years, Chloe was still his daughter. The sight of his pale, agonized face tore through me.
"We have to go there," Dad choked out, grabbing his jacket with shaking hands. "Emily, we have to find her."
"No, Arthur, you stay here with Thomas," Ethan instructed firmly, grabbing his coat. "The police will secure the scene. If Diane’s associates are involved in an intentional collision, walking into that area unarmed is reckless. Emily and I will go with my firm's private investigator, who is already on retainer downstairs."
Twenty minutes later, the flashing crimson and sapphire lights of three police cruisers and an ambulance lit up the rain-slicked asphalt at the intersection of 4th Street and Commercial Boulevard, two blocks south of the St. Regis.
Chloe’s white convertible was crushed against a heavy concrete pillar supporting the elevated expressway. The driver’s side door was caved inward, and glass covered the street like glittering hail. A dark SUV with tinted windows was nowhere to be seen, but skid marks on the wet pavement told the entire violent story.
"Chloe!" Dad shouted as our car pulled up. He ignored Ethan’s warnings and threw himself out into the freezing downpour, sprinting toward the perimeter tape.
"Sir, stay back!" a police officer ordered, stepping into Dad’s path.
"That’s my daughter! That’s my daughter in that car!" Dad screamed, his voice breaking into raw sobs.
A paramedic emerged from the wreckage, signaling to the lead officer. "Victim is alive! Severe concussion, fractured clavicle, internal bleeding possible, but she's breathing. Prep the gurney!"
I ran to Dad's side, holding him upright as his knees buckled under the weight of relief and shock. As the paramedics pulled Chloe from the mangled wreckage on a backboard, her eyes fluttered open. Her face was covered in blood, her blonde hair matted and ruined.
As they wheeled her past us toward the ambulance, her trembling hand reached out, clutching at the air until her fingers brushed my coat.
"Emily..." she whispered weakly through an oxygen mask. "Under the... spare tire... the lining..."
Before I could answer, the paramedics hoisted her into the back of the ambulance and slammed the doors shut, sirens wailing as the vehicle sped away into the night.
Ethan caught my eye. While the police officers were distracted coordinating traffic and taking notes from the collision investigator, Ethan smoothly stepped toward the crushed rear trunk of Chloe's convertible. With the help of our private investigator, Ethan pried open the twisted latch of the trunk.
He reached beneath the false floor, right beneath the emergency spare tire.
When Ethan pulled his hand back, he wasn't holding a tablet.
He was holding a water-resistant, zippered leather pouch containing a thick, hand-bound black ledger and an old brass key stamped with a three-digit number: **714**.
"What is that?" I whispered under the deafening rumble of the rain.
Ethan unzipped the pouch under the beam of a small flashlight. On the opening page of the ledger was my grandmother Evelyn Vance’s unmistakable, sharp handwriting, dated July 1994.
Across the first line, written in bold black ink, were the words:
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***