The Woman in White Disappears
Chapter 08 - The Woman in White Disappears
Sloane Mercer had left her hotel at 4:20 p.m.
Security footage showed her wearing jeans, a black coat, and no makeup. She carried one overnight bag. At the front desk, she asked whether a man named Victor Kane had left a message.
At 4:31, a black sedan collected her.
She did not appear forced.
At 6:10, Victor’s empty car was found near the quarry.
Sloane’s blood was in the trunk.
Adrian reacted like a man split between fear and guilt.
“I need to go there.”
Agent Monroe blocked the music-room door.
“No.”
“She may be hurt.”
“You are not part of the search team.”
Adrian turned to Naomi.
“Do something.”
Naomi looked at him.
“For years, that sentence worked.”
He stared.
“You handled the board. My mother. The employees. The press. The parts of life I found inconvenient. You said do something, and I did.”
“This is not about our marriage.”
“Everything became our marriage when you brought her into my house and used her to erase me.”
Adrian’s face crumpled.
“Sloane did not know.”
Naomi believed that now.
That was the cruelty of learning the truth. It required giving innocence back to people you wanted to blame.
Sloane had entered Blackthorn wearing white because Adrian promised her a future. She had stood beside him while he took Naomi’s keys because she believed the marriage was over and the estate belonged to him.
Then she found the flash drive.
Then she spoke.
Now she was missing.
Naomi called Marcus.
“Find Sloane’s mother.”
Within thirty minutes, Evelyn Mercer arrived at Blackthorn wrapped in a camel coat and rage.
She was sixty-one, elegant, divorced, and famous for raising money without ever appearing to ask. The society pages called her warm. In person, she had the focused eyes of a mother who had spent her whole life preventing men from reducing her daughter to decoration.
She walked past Adrian without greeting him.
“Where is Sloane?”
“We don’t know,” Naomi said.
Evelyn looked at her.
“Did my daughter help you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wasn’t she protected?”
The question landed where it should.
Not on Adrian.
On Naomi.
Naomi had treated Sloane like a witness with useful evidence. She had not asked whether the woman had somewhere safe to sleep.
“I should have arranged protection,” Naomi said.
Evelyn’s expression shifted slightly.
Most powerful people defended first. Naomi’s admission did not fix anything, but it changed the room.
Evelyn removed Sloane’s old tablet from her bag.
“She left this at my apartment last month. She forgets passwords but never deletes voice notes.”
Marcus connected it to a secure laptop.
There were dozens of recordings. Lists. Wedding ideas. Reminders. Fragments of arguments with Adrian.
One file had been recorded the night before Naomi returned.
Sloane’s voice came first.
“You said she signed the transfer.”
Adrian replied, “She will.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“My mother has papers prepared.”
“What papers?”
“Medical incapacity. Abandonment. Whatever becomes necessary.”
Sloane’s voice hardened.
“You told me she left you.”
“She did.”
“No, Adrian. You removed her.”
A door opened in the recording.
Victor Kane’s voice entered.
“Stop recording.”
The file ended.
Adrian sat down.
Evelyn turned on him.
“You brought that man near my daughter.”
“I didn’t know Victor would hurt her.”
“You keep saying you did not know while women around you bleed.”
Naomi looked at Evelyn.
The sentence needed no improvement.
Agent Ross called from the quarry search.
They had found footprints leading away from the road.
Two sets.
One large.
One small.
Sloane had been alive after the blood entered the trunk.
The tracks led toward an abandoned hunting lodge owned by Vale Meridian.
Naomi knew the lodge.
Daniel had once called it “Vivian’s confessional” because executives went there when they wanted meetings without calendars.
The search team entered at 9:43 p.m.
They found Sloane in the cellar.
Alive.
Her palm was cut. Her ankle was bruised. She had locked herself inside after escaping Victor.
Victor was gone.
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But on the cellar wall, written in charcoal, were six words:
ASK ADRIAN WHO PAID FOR VERMONT.
