Chapter 6 - THE PHANTOM IN THE SHADOWS
The next morning, David called his contacts at the FBI's regional field office in Chicago.
Because the case now involved interstate flight, corporate fraud, and potential witness intimidation across state lines, Special Agent Karen Vance (no relation to my family) took over the investigation.
Police cruisers were posted outside David’s brownstone twenty-four hours a day. Harper was kept out of school, spending her days drawing quietly at the dining table while David and Agent Vance tracked down every lead connected to Arthur Vane and Wyatt Cole.
For two weeks, the world outside felt like an approaching storm.
Every time a floorboard creaked, I jumped. Every time a car slowed down on the street below, I looked through the blinds. The safe haven of David’s apartment felt more like a gilded cage.
On a rainy Thursday afternoon, I walked down to the small neighborhood grocery store two blocks away, escorted by an undercover officer named Officer Perez.
As I walked down the aisle picking up milk and bread, my phone buzzed with a text message from an unknown contact.
Attached was a photo.
My heart stopped.
It was a photo taken five minutes ago. It showed Officer Perez sitting in his unmarked car outside the grocery store, asleep, with a red dot from a laser pointer aimed directly at his temple.
Below the photo was a text:
Come out the back door alone, Elena. Or your bodyguard doesn't wake up.
"Officer Perez!" I gasped, turning around to run toward the front of the store.
Through the front glass windows, I saw Perez’s car. He wasn't asleep—he was slumped sideways over the steering wheel, unconscious.
Panicking, I grabbed my purse and ran toward the rear emergency exit of the grocery store. I pushed open the heavy metal door, stepping into the narrow, rain-slicked alleyway.
Standing beside a dark blue sedan with tinted windows was Wyatt.
He looked haggard. His suit was gone, replaced by a dark raincoat and a baseball hat pulled low over his eyes. His face was thin, stubbled, and desperate.
In his hand, he held a suppressed handgun aimed directly at my chest.
"Walk toward the car, Elena," he said, his voice flat. "Don't scream. Don't make a sound."
"Wyatt, please," I begged, taking a slow step back against the brick wall. "The FBI is everywhere. You can't get away with this."
"I don't care about getting away anymore!" he snapped, his jaw twitching. "You ruined my life! I gave up two years to play the doting stepfather! I washed your dishes, I took out your trash, I pretended to care about your stupid little grief support groups! And you threw me away for a dead man's notebook!"
"You killed him!" I cried, tears mixing with the cold rain on my face. "You killed Nolan!"
"He was soft!" Wyatt yelled, stepping closer, grabbing my hair with his free hand and shoving me toward the passenger door. "Get in the car!"
"Mommy!" a voice screamed from the mouth of the alley.
I turned my head.
Harper had slipped out of David’s brownstone when she realized I had been gone too long. She stood at the entrance of the alleyway, clutching her stuffed bear, her small face pale with terror.
"Harper, run!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Wyatt’s head snapped toward the child. For a fraction of a second, his focus shifted.
It was the only opening I needed.
I drove my elbow backward with all the force I possessed, hitting Wyatt square in the nose. A loud crunch sounded, and Wyatt gasped, staggering back, dropping the gun onto the wet pavement.
I lunged for the weapon, kicking it under a dumpster, and threw myself over Harper, shielding her body with mine as heavy footsteps thundered into the alley.
"FBI! Don't move!" Agent Vance’s voice echoed off the brick walls as three armed agents rounded the corner, their weapons trained on Wyatt.
Wyatt held his bleeding nose, looking at the agents, then at me holding my daughter on the wet asphalt.
He tried to run toward the far street, but two officers tackled him into a stack of wooden pallets, slamming handcuffs onto his wrists.
As they dragged him away, Wyatt looked back at me, his eyes empty, hollowed out by his own greed.
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"I saved you, Elena," he choked out as he was shoved into the back of a police cruiser. "You would have starved without me..."
"My husband saved us," I said, holding Harper tightly against my chest. "He left us the truth."
