Chapter 5 - the first woman who disappeared
Arthur Hollis could wait.
Grace could not.
She wanted to understand the women.
Lauren Reese.
Rebecca Shaw.
And whoever else Sophie had found in the garage box.
Detective Avery agreed.
They separated Richard’s personal history from the Hollis mystery and focused on what could be proven.
The first marriage certificate connected him to Lauren Reese.
The second set of records involved Rebecca Shaw.
A third photograph showed a woman named Elaine Porter.
Grace recognized the location in the picture.
A lake.
Mountain trees.
A cabin.
“What happened to her?” Sophie asked.
Lena searched.
Elaine Porter was not missing.
She was alive.
Living in Charlottesville.
Police contacted her.
Elaine refused to discuss Richard by phone.
Grace asked to go.
Lena objected at first.
Then Elaine changed her mind when she learned Grace had nearly married him.
The meeting took place in a police interview room.
Elaine was fifty-one, elegant, composed, and visibly nervous.
She looked at Grace’s wedding photograph.
“That’s him.”
“What name did he use with you?” Lena asked.
“Daniel Cross.”
Grace remembered the ID Sophie found.
“How long were you together?”
“Eleven months.”
“Engaged?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
Grace stared.
“He left you?”
“Two weeks before the wedding.”
“Why?”
Elaine gave a bitter laugh.
“I thought because he stole money.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Did you report it?”
“Yes.”
“The case went nowhere?”
“He had used a fake identity.”
Grace asked the question that mattered.
“Did he hurt you?”
Elaine looked at her.
“Not physically.”
“Did he ever frighten you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night I found his second phone.”
Elaine discovered messages from another woman.
Lauren Reese.
“She thought he was her husband.”
Grace’s pulse quickened.
“So he was with both of you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you contact Lauren?”
“I tried.”
Elaine’s expression changed.
“She disappeared three days later.”
The room became silent.
“Did you tell police?” Lena asked.
“Yes.”
“What did Daniel—Richard—say?”
“He told me I was paranoid.”
“Then he vanished?”
“One week later.”
Grace swallowed.
“Why didn’t he hurt you?”
Elaine looked toward Sophie.
“I think he was going to.”
Sophie’s face tightened.
Elaine continued.
“But someone stopped him.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
The night before Richard disappeared, Elaine found an envelope under her windshield wiper.
Inside was a photograph of Daniel Cross beside another woman and a handwritten warning:
LEAVE YOUR HOUSE TONIGHT. DO NOT TELL HIM WHERE YOU ARE GOING.
Elaine obeyed.
She spent the night with a friend.
When she returned, the back door had been forced.
Nothing was stolen.
“Police said burglary attempt.”
“You didn’t believe them?”
“No.”
Lena showed Elaine photographs from the Hollis family.
“Do you recognize anyone?”
Elaine pointed to Michael.
“I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“Outside my office the day after Daniel disappeared.”
Michael was brought in.
He admitted it.
“I warned her.”
“Why?” Lena asked.
“Because Samuel was getting too close to becoming Arthur.”
Grace frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Michael looked at her.
“Arthur taught Samuel that people were assets. Names were tools. Marriage was access.”
“You’re saying Richard was trained to target women.”
“Yes.”
“Did he kill Lauren?”
Michael looked away.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he kill Rebecca?”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“I spent years trying to find out.”
Michael revealed that he had followed Samuel under several identities, sometimes intervening when he believed women were in danger.
“Why not go to police?”
“Arthur owned police.”
“Twenty years ago, maybe,” Lena said. “Not now.”
Michael gave her a tired look.
“You think networks die because their founder gets old?”
Lena remembered the signet ring on the man who grabbed Sophie.
No.
The network had entered the wedding hall.
Someone was still protecting Richard or hunting him.
Then Elaine asked something none of them expected.
“Have you found Lauren’s daughter?”
Grace looked at her.
“Lauren had a daughter?”
Elaine nodded.
“Six years old when she disappeared.”
Lena checked the file.
The child, Emma Reese, was listed as being with her grandparents during Lauren’s trip.
“What happened to her?”
“Grandparents died two years later.”
“Then?”
“Foster care, I think.”
Lena searched.
Emma Reese’s records disappeared at age nine.
No adoption record.
No death certificate.
Nothing.
Michael looked at the photograph.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He recognized her.
“Arthur had this girl at the Hollis estate.”
Grace stared.
“When?”
“Twelve years ago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie whispered, “Richard’s missing wife’s daughter was living with the people who trained him.”
Michael nodded.
Then he added one more detail.
“She wasn’t being held there.”
“What do you mean?”
May you like
“She called Arthur Grandfather.”
👉 The daughter of Richard’s missing wife had vanished into the Hollis family and apparently believed Arthur Hollis was her grandfather.
