He Left Me Alone on a Rainy Road and Received a Call About My Disappearance an Hour Later — His Face Immediately Turned Pale

That night I was still clinging to the car door when Mason Vale said to me in a voice as if he were reading a verdict:

“Get out.”

Outside, autumn’s strongest storm was raging. Rain struck the black windows as if someone were desperately knocking and demanding to be let in. And I was wearing the emerald-colored dress he had sent me that same evening.

“Mason, did I understand correctly?” I asked, placing my wet hands on my lap.

“Claire, get out of the car.”

His voice did not rise. That was exactly why I became afraid. Everyone in the city knew that Mason Vale’s quiet voice was much more dangerous than someone else’s shouting.

His company officially managed port shipping, warehouses, and security. But in that same city, people whispered that the Vale name also protected deals the police should never learn about.

I knew all this when I met him.

And still I fell in love with him.

“There is a storm outside,” I told him. “We are almost two miles from the city.”

“I know.”

“Then at least explain to me what is happening.”

Mason gripped the steering wheel more tightly. The knuckles of his fingers turned white.

“Jonah Quinn.”

He pronounced the name as if he had placed a weapon in the room.

“What Jonah Quinn?”

“Three weeks ago you met him at a café on Alder Street. You handed him an envelope.”

“Were you spying on me?”

“Someone sent me your photographs.”

“Someone?”

“Vanessa Hale.”

I remembered the gala. Vanessa approached Mason in a golden dress, touched his arm, and quietly said something to him. A few seconds later, his face changed, and then he came to me.

“Let’s go,” was all he told me.

“Jonah is Natalie’s cousin,” I told him. “I gave him an invitation to the birthday. I did not trust the mail.”

“The Quinn family has too many faces.”

“Jonah is an insurance agent. He collects old baseball cards and cries at dog movies.”

“Did you invent all this to protect yourself?”

His words broke something in my heart.

“I asked only one thing from you,” I said quietly. “Before declaring me guilty, you should have asked me at least once.”

Mason looked at me for the first time. In his eyes I saw not anger, but fear. But at that moment it no longer mattered.

“I never said that I love you,” he said.

He also knew that this was precisely what was most cruel.

I took hold of the door handle. A small copper sun-shaped pendant swung on my bag—the gift from Natalie that I had carried with me since childhood. Its tiny bell softly jingled with every movement.

“Tomorrow, if you realize that you were wrong, do not come to my apartment with only one apology,” I told him.

“Claire…”

“Trust dies even when a person betrays you. Sometimes it dies when the person you love decides, without any question, that you are capable of betrayal.”

I opened the door.

The rain immediately rushed at me. Within a few seconds, the dress clung to my body, the silver heels of my shoes sank into the mud. I closed the car door and did not look back.

Only when the red lights disappeared around the bend did I realize that I was barefoot and that an almost twenty-five-minute walk to Natalie’s house awaited me.

I took out my phone.

“Claire?” Fear immediately appeared in Natalie’s voice. “Where are you?”

“On Rivercrest Road, near the old nursery.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Apparently I was a spy.”

Silence fell for several seconds.

“What did you say?”

“I’ll tell you the big story later. Right now I’m just walking, or I’ll freeze in this rain and also start crying over a man who does not deserve it.”

“I’m getting the car keys. I’m coming to you.”

“No. There is a traffic jam at the bridge, and the roads are flooding. I’ll call you again in ten minutes.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

I held out for seven minutes.

Then headlights appeared behind me. A black automobile was slowly following me. I moved toward the edge of the road, but it did the same. The driver’s door opened.

“Mrs. Bennett!” the man called to me.

I ran. My bare feet slipped on the wet asphalt, branches scratched my arms, while the small copper sun on my bag jingled constantly in the storm.

My foot caught on the edge of a drainage ditch. Pain went through my body and I rolled down the slope. When I stopped, I saw a flashlight above.

“Mrs. Bennett, I don’t have a weapon!” the man shouted.

I picked up a branch from the ground.

In the flashlight’s beam I recognized his face.

Cole Mercer. Mason’s head of security.

“Mason sent me,” he told me.

“He left me on the road and now, by sending you, is checking my death?”

Cole swallowed awkwardly.

“He didn’t say it that way.”

“Then what did he tell you?”

Cole put his hand into his pocket and showed the edge of a black folder. Then another pair of headlights fell over him from above, and Cole’s face changed in one instant…

Cole immediately pushed me toward the ground.

“Keep your head down!”

The black automobile stopped at the side of the road. The engine did not turn off.

“That is not Mason’s car,” Cole whispered.

“Then who are they?”

“I don’t know. But we have to get out of here.”

He put his jacket over me and led me to an abandoned greenhouse of the old nursery on the other side of the slope. Glass fragments crunched under our feet. I was limping, the dress had become heavy with mud, and fear was beating in my heart as if it were breaking my ribs.

“What did Mason tell you?” I asked again.

Cole opened the folder.

“He told me not to let you out of my sight. But that is not everything.”

“Did he see the photographs?”

“Vanessa showed only part of them.”

He took out a small device and started a recording. At first there was the sound of wind, then Vanessa’s voice:

“If Claire is left alone on the road, the Quinns will find her. Mason will be forced to transfer everything into my name.”

The recording stopped immediately.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“In Vanessa’s office.”

Outside, a door slammed. Someone was entering the greenhouse.

Cole brought a finger to his lips.

I was still holding that small copper sun in my hand. Its bell was no longer jingling.

Then Cole whispered to me:

“Claire, the envelope you gave Jonah was not an invitation. Natalie had him bring it for you, but there was something else inside…”

Cole could not finish the sentence because the greenhouse door opened. Mason entered, soaked by the rain, and the severity with which he had put me out of the car an hour earlier was no longer written on his face.

“Claire, are you here?”

“If you tell me once more that it was better for you to leave me alone outside, this time I will leave you.”

He came toward me, but Cole raised his hand.

“She has to understand everything first.”

Mason looked at the folder.

“What did you find?”

Cole placed a small memory card on the table and then connected the phone. A recording from the café on Alder Street appeared on the screen.

I was sitting at the table. Jonah was standing in front of me. I took an invitation from my bag and handed it to him. There had been neither an envelope, nor money, nor a secret document. Only a card written in Natalie’s hand and the birthday address.

“Look at the time,” Cole said. “The recording was made at six eleven in the evening. But the time on Vanessa’s photographs is six forty-nine. In the photograph Claire is holding a different bag.”

Mason stared at the screen.

“The photographs were altered,” I said.

“Not only the photographs,” Cole answered. “Vanessa cut from the café camera the part where Jonah gives Claire medical documents. His mother was admitted to the hospital that same evening. Claire asked for help.”

Mason lowered his eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I should not have passed Natalie’s private life on to you. And because for once I wanted to keep a secret for someone without becoming guilty because of it.”

Cole played the recording to the end. Vanessa’s voice sounded again:

“Mason will believe Claire if he does not become suspicious of her. So first I have to put fear into him. When he throws her out, access to the company documents will remain with me.”

Complete silence fell in the greenhouse.

Mason buried his face in his hands.

“She signed the transfers in my name,” he said. “I thought my financial director checked everything.”

“Vanessa and the Quinns were working together,” Cole added. “And to enter your company, they considered Claire an obstacle.”

Mason found it difficult to look at me.

“Claire, I…”

“Do not tell me now that you love me. First tell me how long it would have taken you to truly believe my death.”

His face turned pale.

At that moment Cole’s phone rang. He answered, listened for several seconds, and looked toward me.

“Natalie is in the hospital.”

My heart froze.

“What happened to her?”

“Someone broke the door at her house. The police found a letter saying that if you do not bring the documents, Natalie and her husband will not survive.”

Mason immediately took out his phone.

“I’ll call the police.”

Cole shook his head.

“It is already too late. Along with the letter they found a second address.”

“Where?” I asked.

Cole looked at me for one second before answering.

“At the house where Mason’s entire secret archive is. And Vanessa has already arrived there…”