Richard closed his eyes.
"I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't."
"How much?"
Linda shook her head.
"Enough to change Daniel's life."
Emma felt dizzy.
All of this had started because of money.
Or perhaps it had started because someone believed she had a right to something.
Then a security alarm sounded.
A voice shouted from the corridor.
"They're inside!"
Richard grabbed Emma's arm.
"You have to leave."
Emma looked at Linda.
"You're coming with us."
Linda hesitated.
Then she nodded.
For the first time in twenty years, mother and daughter stood side by side.
Not as strangers.
Not as the identities they had invented.
But as two people trapped inside a secret that was finally collapsing.
They escaped through a hidden passage beneath the study.
The tunnel was narrow and dark.
Richard struggled to walk.
Emma supported him.
Linda followed behind.
Suddenly, footsteps echoed above them.
Someone had entered the mansion.
Emma whispered.
"Are we safe?"
Richard shook his head.
"No."
A voice echoed through the tunnel entrance.
"Emily!"
Emma stopped.
The voice continued.
"You've spent twenty years hiding."
A pause.
"Tonight, the Weston family gets its daughter back."
Emma looked at Richard.
Then at Linda.
And understood that finding her real family had not solved the mystery.
It had opened the door to something much more dangerous.
The tunnel ended beneath an abandoned boathouse several hundred yards from the mansion.
Rain poured over the roof.
The ocean crashed against the rocks below.
Richard was barely conscious.
Emma and Linda helped him into an old vehicle hidden beneath a tarp.
Linda drove.
She knew exactly where she was going.
Emma sat in the back seat beside Richard.
His breathing was shallow.
"Hospital," she said.
"No."
"You've been shot."
"Hospital records can be traced."
Emma looked at Linda.
"Then where?"
"A doctor who owes me a favor."
Twenty minutes later, they reached a small private clinic outside the city.
An elderly physician treated Richard in a locked room.
The bullet had passed through his shoulder.
He would survive.
But the doctor warned that they couldn't stay.
Daniel's people were already searching.
While Richard rested, Emma confronted Linda.
They sat across from each other in a small kitchen.
For the first time, Emma could study her mother without the emotional distance of childhood.
"You should have told me."
Linda looked down.
"I know."
"I deserved the truth."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because every time I thought about telling you, I remembered the night I took you."
Linda described it.
Emily had been asleep in the back seat.
Linda had believed men were following them.
She drove for hours.
At dawn, she stopped beside a lake.
The little girl woke.
"Where are we going?"
Linda had cried.
"Somewhere safe."
Emily had asked for her father.
Linda couldn't answer.
"So I lied."
Emma listened quietly.
"Was Richard really a bad father?"
"No."
"Then why didn't you bring me back?"
"Because by then I was afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of everyone."
Linda explained that she had received threats.
Some came through letters.
Some by phone.
One warned that if she contacted Richard, Emily would disappear permanently.
Another threatened to harm Margaret.
Linda had believed the danger was real.
Years passed.
Then ten years.
Then fifteen.
Every year, she planned to tell Emma.
Every year, she lost courage.
Emma looked away.
"You weren't protecting me anymore."
"I know."
"You were protecting yourself."
Linda's eyes filled with tears.
"Yes."
The honesty hurt.
But somehow it was easier to accept than another lie.
Richard entered the room.
His arm was bandaged.
He carried an old wooden box.
"I think it's time you saw this."
Emma opened it.
Inside were letters.
Dozens of them.
All addressed to Emily.
Richard had written one every birthday.
Some were only a few lines.
Others were pages long.
He had written about school.
About the company.
About his loneliness.
About how much he missed her.
Emma picked up one dated eighteen years earlier.
Dear Emily,
Today you would be seven.
I bought a cake even though no one is here to eat it.
I know that sounds foolish.
But I wanted the house to smell like your birthday.
Emma cried.
She opened another.
Dear Emily,
Today you would be twelve.
I saw a girl in the park who laughed the way you used to laugh.
For one terrible second, I thought it was you.
I hope wherever you are, someone is making you laugh.
Emma closed her eyes.
She had spent twenty years believing nobody had been looking for her.
Now she realized someone had never stopped.
Richard placed another document on the table.
"This is the trust."
The document explained that Emily Weston had inherited a substantial private fortune from her grandfather.
But the money was not the only important thing.
The trust also controlled voting rights in a company subsidiary.
If Emily returned before her twenty-fifth birthday, she would become the controlling beneficiary.
Emma stared.
"When is my birthday?"
"Tomorrow."
She looked at him.
"What?"
"Your twenty-fifth birthday is tomorrow."
Emma felt a chill.
Daniel wasn't chasing her because of some distant possibility.