Chapter 7 - Paige’s DelayPaige requested to speak with Anna without Jason or her parents present.
They met in a secured conference room.
“I am not asking you to forgive me,” Paige began.
“Good.”
Paige lowered her eyes.
She learned about Rebecca one year earlier after following Richard to the private clinic. She photographed Jason delivering medication and secretly copied files from the family computer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Dad said Rebecca would die if the clinic lost funding.”
“You believed him?”
“I saw her collapse when they withheld treatment.”
“The collapse was induced.”
“I know that now.”
Paige sent an anonymous warning to the police three days before the family trip. The message claimed a medically vulnerable woman might be abandoned inside a residence.
It did not include Anna’s name or address.
“Why so vague?”
“I thought Dad monitored my phone.”
“He did.”
Paige feared direct disclosure would cause Richard to move Rebecca and accelerate Anna’s removal.
Instead, she hid the emergency phone inside the kitchen drawer and inserted a working battery.
Anna stared at her.
“You knew I might need it.”
“Yes.”
“You knew they were locking me inside.”
“I knew Jason planned to leave you without communication. He told me your medication would remain.”
“But you watched Dad take the bottles.”
“I thought he replaced them with another supply.”
“You could have opened the organizer.”
Paige began crying.
“I did not want to know enough that I would have to stop them.”
The admission was ugly and true.
She had created an escape route while allowing the danger to exist.
Detective Laura asked who screwed the windows shut.
Paige had.
Richard told her they were installing storm protection before the trip. She realized the truth when Jason attached an exterior lock to the door.
“Did you remove it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Jason said police would arrive within an hour.”
Laura’s expression hardened.
“The call did not place itself.”
Paige looked toward Anna.
“I was supposed to activate the emergency phone remotely after they reached the airport.”
“Did you?”
“I tried. Dad changed the code.”
Richard had anticipated betrayal.
Paige’s hidden battery saved Anna, but only because Anna found the phone herself.
Her partial resistance did not erase her cooperation.
Paige surrendered a storage key.
Inside a rented unit, police found Richard’s backup evidence: forged letters, altered photographs, death-certificate templates, and identity documents for Rebecca under Anna’s name.
One box contained Jason’s personal recordings.
In the earliest, he confessed that Richard ordered him to marry Anna.
In later recordings, Jason described falling in love with her and planning to expose the family.
The final recording was made two nights before departure.
“I cannot save both women. If Anna lives, Dad kills Rebecca. If Rebecca disappears, the trust goes public and they expose Mom. I need seventy-four days to find Margaret.”
Jason claimed he never intended to return from the family trip.
He planned to locate Margaret, expose Richard, and then send help to Anna.
But no rescue instructions existed.
No scheduled call.
No message to police.
Nothing except the emergency phone Paige hid.
Jason may have imagined himself a secret rescuer while accepting that Anna’s survival depended on someone else acting.
Then investigators opened his travel records.
The family had not gone on vacation.
They spent the first twelve days at a private estate owned by Richard.
A third woman was held there.
Her passport identified her as Anna Whitmore.
May you like
The photograph did not show Anna or Rebecca.
👉 Jason had been preparing another woman to carry Anna’s identity even if Rebecca refused.
