Chapter 2 - The Sister's Betrayal
The interrogation room at the 14th Precinct was small, cold, and smelled of stale cigarettes and industrial bleach. Nolan had pulled enough strings to get us into a private observation room behind a two-way mirror. I stood in the darkness, watching Ethan sit at the metal table, his hands cuffed to a steel ring in the center. He looked small now, stripped of his luxury car and his expensive watch.
Captain Thomas Miller, a grizzled man with sharp eyes, walked into the observation room, holding two paper cups of black coffee. He handed one to me.
“We ran the phone records from the device Reed recovered,” Captain Miller said, tapping the folder under his arm. “Your husband made three calls between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. All of them went to a burner phone registered under a fake name, but the cell tower pings place the device exactly inside your sister Marissa’s apartment downtown.”
A cold lump settled in my stomach. Hearing it out loud made the betrayal sting all over again. Marissa. My older sister. The one who had held my hand at our parents’ funeral, the one who told me Ethan was a 'catch' when we first started dating.
“What about the files he mentioned?” I asked, my hands shaking slightly against the warm coffee cup. “The 'old files in the basement'?”
“We sent a unit to your sister’s apartment twenty minutes ago under the guise of an emergency wellness check,” Miller explained. “When she opened the door, she was packing a suitcase. In plain sight on her kitchen table was a storage locker agreement and a set of medical records belonging to a woman named Clara Vance.”
“Clara Vance?” I echoed, looking at Nolan.
Nolan’s brow furrowed, his old detective instincts instantly locking into place. “Wait a minute. Clara Vance was Ethan’s first wife. She allegedly died three years ago. The report said she took a fatal fall hiking near the Starved Rock canyons during their first anniversary trip. It was ruled a tragic accident. Ethan collected a half-million-dollar payout.”
The room seemed to spin. Same plan as before. The words echoed in my head with a horrifying new context. Ethan hadn't just tried to kill me for money. He was a serial hunter, a man who married women, waited out the one-year clause on their accidental death policies, and then executed them with the help of my own flesh and blood.
“Marissa was Clara’s nurse,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “That’s how Ethan met her. Marissa introduced Ethan to me six months after Clara died. She told me he was a grieving widower who needed a good woman.”
“They set you up from the very beginning, Ava,” Nolan said gently, his voice heavy with protective anger. “Your sister found the marks, Ethan provided the charm, and Caleb handled the paperwork in the next county to make sure no insurance investigator looked too closely at the timeline.”
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The door to the interrogation room opened, and a detective stuck his head in. “Captain, we just brought Marissa in. She’s throwing a fit, demanding to see her lawyer. But we found something else in her purse. A forged passport under the name Ava Vance, with Marissa’s photo on it.”
I looked back through the two-way mirror at Ethan, who was currently burying his face in his cuffed hands. They weren't just going to kill me. Marissa was going to steal my identity, collect the double payout, and flee the country with my husband.
