PART THREE — THE DEAD WOMAN

Camden had told me he had never been married.

He said his hesitation about our wedding came from watching his parents’ unhappy relationship, not from burying another wife.

Yet there she was in the photograph, one hand resting against his chest, smiling like a woman who had never drowned.

Evelyn insisted we contact federal investigators immediately.

I refused until I understood why a dead woman had reappeared beside my husband.

“Understanding can become a luxury when someone is trying to frame you,” Evelyn warned.

“And trust can become a weapon when you give it to the wrong person.”

She flinched, and I regretted the words.

Evelyn had been more than a mentor to me.

After my mother died, she attended every birthday, remembered every anniversary, and stood beside me at my wedding while Camden slipped a ring onto my finger.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re frightened,” she replied.

“I’m furious.”

“Good. Fury lasts longer.”

The next morning, Camden called through an encrypted video service.

He appeared on a sunlit terrace overlooking the Caribbean, wearing a white shirt open at the collar.

Sienna stood behind him with long black hair moving in the wind.

She was not laughing now.

“Where is the drive?” Camden asked.

I angled the phone so he could see Lila sleeping against my chest.

“You haven’t asked about your daughter.”

“Is she healthy?”

“She is perfect.”

Relief flickered across his face, but it vanished so quickly I wondered whether I had imagined it.

“Claire, the drive does not belong to you.”

“It contains my forged signature.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“By stealing our baby’s money and fleeing with your supposedly dead wife?”

Sienna stepped closer.

“Camden, tell her.”

“Stay out of this,” he snapped.

Her expression hardened.

I saw no affection between them then, only a shared terror.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

Camden rubbed a hand over his face.

“My father’s company has been stealing from residents for years.”

“I know.”

“He made me part of it when I was twenty-three.”

“You were old enough to say no.”

“You don’t understand Walter.”

“Then help me understand.”

Camden looked over his shoulder as if the turquoise ocean might contain someone listening.

“Sienna discovered the fraud twelve years ago and threatened to expose it.”

“So you killed her?”

“No.”

Sienna spoke for herself.

“Walter arranged the boating accident, but Camden warned me before it happened.”

She had escaped using cash and false identification, then spent more than a decade living under another name.

According to her, Camden had remained inside his father’s company to gather evidence, but over time, survival had turned into comfort, and comfort had turned into complicity.

“Why come back now?” I asked.

“Because Walter is preparing to sell the company,” she said.

“Once the sale closes, the records disappear and the residents lose any chance of recovering their money.”

“And my account?”

Camden answered.

“The money in Lila’s fund was marked.”

“Marked by whom?”

“The Justice Department.”

I almost laughed.

“You expect me to believe federal investigators placed marked money in my baby’s savings account?”

“It was transferred there without my knowledge three months ago.”

I remembered the deposit.

Camden had told me it came from the sale of a small parcel of family land.

“The resort, yacht, and luggage charges were a diversion,” Sienna said.

“A diversion from what?”

“The twelve million dollars Walter moved into Northstar under your name.”

My throat tightened.

Camden claimed the island trip was designed to make Walter believe he had abandoned me and joined Sienna in fleeing the country.

While Walter watched them, Camden planned to send the storage drive to investigators.

Instead, frightened that his father had discovered the plan, he had taken the emergency money and used it to finance their escape.

“You could have told me,” I said.

“I wanted you to be able to deny everything.”

“You did not protect me, Camden; you stripped me of choice.”

He lowered his head.

“I know.”

I wanted his explanation to absolve him because some part of me still remembered the man who painted Lila’s nursery and cried when he first heard her heartbeat.

But love cannot survive forever on memories of who someone almost became.

“Come home,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“Then send me every record you have.”

Camden looked at Sienna.

She gave a slight nod.

A file-transfer notification appeared on my phone.

Before I could open it, a shadow moved across Camden’s terrace.

Sienna’s eyes widened.

“Get down!”

The image lurched sideways as glass shattered.

Camden fell out of view, and the call went black.