Chapter 2 - The Stranger in the Woods
I didn't press the alarm button.
If I pressed it, my guards would sweep the grounds, arrest the woman at the window, and Hilda would have hours to scrub whatever evidence lay hidden inside this house. I needed answers, and I needed them before the sun rose over Nashville.
I pulled a matte-black Sig Sauer 9mm from my desk drawer, racked the slide with a heavy clack, and holstered it beneath my jacket.
Moving like a shadow, I slipped out through the study's private side entrance, bypassing the main hallway, and exited into the freezing night through the conservatory doors.
The damp autumn air bit into my skin as I rounded the northern wing of the estate. The rain had started to fall—a light, freezing drizzle that made the dead leaves slick under my boots.
As I rounded the corner near the nursery window, I saw the woman crouching in the mud. She was whispering through the bars, her voice soft and trembling.
"Eat slowly, sweetie... don't choke. I brought more broth for tomorrow night..."
"Who are you?"
My voice cut through the dark like a blade.
The woman gasped, jumping backward into the wet rosebushes. She scrambled to her feet, her hands flying up to protect her face. "Please! Don't shoot! I'm not trying to steal anything! I swear!"
I stepped out of the tree line, the tactical flashlight in my left hand illuminating her face with a blinding white beam.
She was younger than I had initially thought—no older than twenty-eight. She had sharp, high cheekbones, dark hazel eyes filled with terrifying desperation, and a jagged, faded scar running along her jawline. She was soaked through, her thin canvas jacket offering no protection against the cold.
"You have ten seconds to tell me why you're feeding my daughters through a window," I said, my thumb clicking the safety off my sidearm. "Or I call the authorities."
"If you call the police," the woman cried out, her voice cracking with raw emotion, "Hilda Dawson will kill those girls just like she killed your wife!"
The world stopped spinning. The sound of the wind, the rustling leaves, the pounding rain—everything vanished into a high-pitched, ringing silence.
I took three steps forward, grabbing her by the collar of her damp jacket, pinning her hard against the stone wall of the estate. The flashlight beam burned into her eyes.
"What did you just say?" I growled, my voice shaking with a lethal, desperate rage.
"Elena... your wife, Elena," the girl sobbed, not fighting my grip. "She didn't die of a heart attack, Mr. Alvarez! She was being poisoned! Slowly, over eight months! With small doses of liquid digitalis mixed into her evening tea!"
"You're lying!" I snarled, tightening my grip. "Elena had an underlying genetic cardiac condition! The coroner—"
"—The coroner was paid sixty thousand dollars by Hilda Dawson’s brother, Arthur Dawson!" the girl interrupted, her eyes locking onto mine with absolute, terrifying truth. "Check the autopsy records! Check the toxicity screening that was left off the official report! Arthur owns the private mortuary where Elena was taken!"
My chest heaved. My hands were shaking so violently I nearly dropped the gun.
"Who are you?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the rain.
"My name is Clara," she choked out, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks. "I was Elena’s personal assistant for two years before she died. Three days after Elena passed, Hilda framed me for stealing fifty thousand dollars from the house safe. She threatened to have my little brother killed if I didn't leave Tennessee."
Clara reached into her pocket with trembling fingers, pulling out a battered, waterproof thumb drive, and pressed it into my palm.
"I’ve been hiding in the woods for three weeks," Clara wept. "I saw Hilda buying liquid sedatives at a pharmacy in town. I saw her throwing away the girls' food every single afternoon. She's starving them, Mateo... she's keeping them too weak to talk, too weak to complain, while she drains millions from your family's estate through shell accounts!"
I stood there in the freezing rain, holding the thumb drive, looking down at this shivering girl who had risked her life to feed my starved children.
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"Why?" I choked out, a wave of profound guilt washing over my soul. "Why feed them through the window?"
"Because I loved Elena," Clara whispered softly. "She saved my life when I had nothing. I couldn't save her... but I wasn't going to let them destroy her daughters."
