Chapter 5 – THE PRICE OF SILENCE
“CHARLES! STOP!”
Sophie ran into the garage, nearly slipping on the wet concrete.
Charles Mercer, Whitmore Manor’s head of security for thirty years, stood beside a black SUV.
Under one arm was a dusty videotape case.
“Miss Sophie, go back inside.”
“Why did you steal that recording?”
Charles avoided her eyes.
“Because your family isn’t ready to see it.”
Sophie stepped in front of the driver’s door.
“My family has been lying for twenty-seven years. I’m ready.”
Charles tried to move past her.
She grabbed the videotape case.
During the struggle, the plastic cracked against the concrete.
A small folded paper fell out.
Sophie snatched it up.
It was a payment receipt dated November 1998.
$250,000 — C. MERCER — SPECIAL TRANSPORT SERVICES.
At the bottom was a handwritten authorization.
V. Whitmore.
Sophie stared at him.
“My mother paid you?”
Charles looked defeated.
“I never hurt Grace.”
Sophie froze.
“What?”
“I took her away. But I never hurt her.”
Charles sank against the SUV.
He told Sophie that Grace had been removed from the estate on Victoria’s orders.
Victoria claimed the girl was in immediate danger and that Eleanor had become unstable.
Charles had been instructed to deliver Grace to a woman named Helen Price, a former nurse in Vermont.
He had accepted the money.
Then, only months later, the mansion caught fire.
Charles began to cry.
“I thought I was saving the child.”
“Where is Grace now?” Sophie demanded.
Charles reached into his coat.
He handed Sophie a recent photograph.
A woman in her thirties stood outside a small public school.
The woman looked exactly like Eleanor had looked in her youth.
On the back was written:
GRACE MORGAN — BURLINGTON, VERMONT.
Charles received a call from Victoria. Sophie heard her mother’s voice clearly: “If the girl finds Grace, neither of them comes back.”