The Trace

The rain had stopped by the time Claire reached the airfield, leaving the tarmac slick and reflective under the runway lights. The private terminal was small, a glass box glowing in the dark, and parked beside it was the jet Sarah had chartered.

It wasn't a Vance jet. It was a generic rental, paid for with the "go bag" money Lena had hidden. Untraceable.

Claire parked Aris's car in the long-term lot. She grabbed the duffel bags—hers, the one from Silas, the evidence from the bank—and ran toward the hangar.

David was already there.

He was pacing by the stairs of the jet, his silhouette sharp against the floodlights. He wore the clothes he had escaped in—a rumpled suit, no tie, mud on his shoes. He looked like a man who had walked out of a burning building and hadn't stopped walking.

When he saw her, he stopped pacing.

"Claire," he breathed. He ran to her, pulling her into a hug that was desperate, crushing. "I thought... when the doors unlocked, I thought it was a trick. I thought they were going to shoot me."

"It wasn't a trick," Claire said, holding him tight. "It was leverage."

She pulled back to look at him. His face was pale, his eyes haunted. He looked younger, stripped of the arrogance Arthur had cultivated in him. He looked like the boy in the polaroid.

"Where are the girls?" he asked.

"Connecticut," Claire said. "My sister is bringing them here. They're ten minutes out."

"And then?"

"And then we go to Ohio."

David flinched. "Ohio. The grave."

"Not just the grave," Claire said. "The beginning. There's a woman there, David. Her name is Mary Kovac. She's been receiving payments from the Trust for thirty years."

"Lena's mother?"

"Or yours," Claire said softly. "Lena was your aunt, David. She came to the house to find you. She stayed to protect you."

She reached into her bag and pulled out the missing person poster Silas had given her. She handed it to him.

*MISSING: Michael Kovac.*
*Age: 2.*

David stared at the photo. The toddler with the blonde hair and the blue eyes. The toddler who looked exactly like Lily.

"My name is Michael," he whispered. The word sounded foreign in his mouth.

"Your name is whatever you want it to be," Claire said. "But you deserve to know who you were before he bought you."

Headlights swept across the tarmac. A minivan pulled up to the gate.

Claire’s sister. And the girls.

The reunion was frantic, tearful. Lily was clutching her headless rabbit, her eyes wide with confusion. The twins were crying. David picked them up, holding them as if he were afraid they would dissolve.

"Get on the plane," Claire ordered. "We need to be in the air before Arthur realizes we aren't running away. We're running toward the evidence."

They boarded the jet. The engines whined to life, a high-pitched scream that drowned out the sound of their own heartbeats.

As the plane taxied down the runway, Claire looked out the window. She half-expected to see police cars racing across the tarmac, or Arthur standing there with a gun.

But there was nothing. Just the empty, wet pavement and the dark line of the trees.

They lifted off. The lights of the estate, of the town, of the life they were leaving behind, shrank into tiny, insignificant specks.

Claire leaned back in her seat. She was exhausted, her body aching, her mind reeling. But for the first time in weeks, she felt a flicker of hope.

She looked at David. He was sitting across the aisle, the missing person poster still clutched in his hand. He was staring at it, lost in a memory he was just beginning to reclaim.

"I told him I was going to a CPA conference," Claire said, breaking the silence.

David looked up. He blinked, as if waking from a trance.

"What?"

"When I left the house tonight," Claire said. "Before the marina. Before everything. I needed an alibi. I told Arthur I was going to a conference."

David let out a short, rough laugh. "A conference."

"He believed it," Claire said. "He thinks I'm predictable. He thinks I'm just the accountant."

"He was wrong," David said. He reached across the aisle and took her hand. "You're not just the accountant, Claire. You're the only one who saw the error in the ledger."

He kissed her cheek. His lips were cold, but his grip was warm.

"Have fun," he whispered, echoing the lie she had told him weeks ago, in another life.

But then his expression shifted. The relief in his eyes hardened into something else. Something darker.

"But Claire," he said. "If we find them... if we find my real family... what happens to us? To the Vances?"

"The Vances don't exist," Claire said. "Not anymore."

David looked out the window, at the clouds obscuring the moon.

"Arthur won't let us land in Ohio," he said. "He owns the airspace. He owns the ground. If we land... we're not meeting family. We're walking into a trap."

Claire looked at him. At the fear that was slowly replacing the relief.

He wasn't relieved to have her gone. He was relieved because he thought she was safe.

But he knew better.

He looked at her, his blue eyes—Arthur's eyes, Evelyn's eyes, *Michael's* eyes—filled with a terrible certainty.

"He's not behind us, Claire," David said. "He's waiting for us."