Chapter 6 - FORTY MILES FROM HOME
At first, it seemed possible she had simply gone somewhere to hide.
Then her mother arrived at Northstar shortly after eight the next morning.
Susan Pierce was sixty-two, pale, trembling and clutching her daughter’s last text message.
Leaving work now.
That message had been sent at 8:04 p.m.
No one had heard from Madison since.
Security footage showed her leaving through the main doors.
Across the street stood Reed Mercer.
He walked toward her.
They disappeared behind parked cars.
Two minutes later, a dark sedan pulled away.
Susan covered her mouth when she saw the video.
“That’s him.”
The detectives who arrived did not make promises.
They collected the footage and the information Northstar legally possessed.
Claire repeatedly warned everyone at the company not to play hero.
“We give them evidence. We stay out of their work.”
Emma sat beside Susan.
The woman’s hands would not stop shaking.
“I was angry with her last night,” Susan whispered. “She told me weeks ago she was dating some rich businessman. I said it sounded too good to be true.”
“You couldn’t know this would happen.”
“I should have insisted.”
“Would she have listened?”
Susan closed her eyes.
“No.”
Emma held her hand.
She could have hated Madison.
Part of her still did.
Not hatred exactly.
Resentment.
Madison had endangered her husband’s company. Employees’ livelihoods. Contracts. Families.
She had signed confidentiality documents and ignored them because a man promised status.
Yet none of that meant she deserved to disappear.
Accountability and cruelty were not the same thing.
Near noon, Susan’s phone rang.
She answered so quickly she nearly dropped it.
“Yes?”
Her expression froze.
Then shattered.
“Is she alive?”
Emma stood.
Susan began sobbing.
“She’s alive.”
Madison had been found in a small rental house forty miles outside the city.
She had been locked overnight in a room after refusing to record a statement claiming she had created the entire corporate scheme herself.
Reed wanted her to erase their messages.
He wanted her voice saying that the documents, photographs and forged paperwork had all been her idea.
Madison refused.
The next morning, she persuaded Reed to let her use the bathroom.
A small window near the ceiling had been cracked open.
She climbed onto a plastic hamper and screamed through it.
A man walking his dog on the road heard her.
By the time detectives reached the property, they were already following information connected to the sedan.
Reed was taken into custody.
Madison was transported to a hospital.
Emma went with Susan.
Grant stayed at Northstar because another forged document had just surfaced.
At the hospital, Madison looked nothing like the woman from the lobby.
Her hair was tangled.
A bruise darkened one wrist.
A hospital blanket covered her shoulders.
When she saw her mother, she broke.
Susan wrapped both arms around her.
“Oh, baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I should have listened.”
“You’re alive.”
Emma remained near the doorway.
Madison eventually noticed her.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Madison whispered, “Mrs. Caldwell.”
Emma stepped closer.
“I only came to see if you were okay.”
Madison wiped her cheeks.
“He told me it was all my fault.”
Emma sat in the chair beside the bed.
“Some of it was.”
Susan looked up sharply.
Emma did not look away.
Madison nodded.
“I know.”
“But not this.”
Emma pointed gently toward the bruise.
“Not being taken. Not being threatened. Not being locked in a room. Those were his choices.”
Madison started crying again.
“He said nobody would believe me because I sent him the documents.”
“You did send them.”
“I know.”
“You will have to answer for that.”
“I know.”
Emma paused.
“But answering for one bad decision does not mean accepting punishment for someone else’s crimes.”
Madison stared at her.
That sentence seemed to reach somewhere deep.
“He knew exactly what to say to me,” she whispered. “He knew I hated being treated like I was invisible. He told me I was smarter than everyone in that office. He said people like Grant were afraid of women like me.”
Emma almost smiled sadly.
“And you liked hearing it.”
“Yes.”
“Most dangerous lies contain something we desperately wish were true.”
Madison looked toward the window.
“I thought I was becoming important.”
Emma leaned back.
“You were already important.”
May you like
Madison looked at her.
“You just confused importance with power.”
