Chapter 6 - My Mother’s Hidden Tracker
Diane said Wade implanted the tracker three years earlier.
She claimed she did not know until Rachel returned and showed her a medical scanner.
That morning, Wade forced Diane to let a private doctor remove it.
“Why marry him after that?” Dad asked.
My mother’s answer came slowly.
“Because Ava was already inside the house.”
I stared at her.
She explained Wade had threatened to hurt me if she canceled the wedding.
The bruises on my wrists came from him catching me in the basement before the ceremony.
He whispered that if I told anyone about the photographs, Dad would be accused of Thomas Hale’s murder.
Then he locked Rachel upstairs.
My mother knew Rachel was alive.
She knew Wade was dangerous.
But she believed completing the wedding would buy time.
“You called me a rabid dog,” I said.
Her face broke.
“He told me to make everyone believe you attacked first.”
“You looked like you meant it.”
“I needed him to believe I chose him.”
I wanted to trust her.
But every explanation arrived only after proof forced it out.
Dad asked the question I could not.
“Who did you think was buried under the floor?”
Diane looked toward the basement.
“Thomas.”
“Did you help put him there?”
“No.”
“Did you see his body?”
She nodded.
“Four years ago.”
The medical case was recovered in Colorado because Thomas had traveled there after escaping the crash.
He contacted Diane, not Dad.
He believed Dad’s communications were monitored.
Diane arranged to meet him at the wedding house.
Wade arrived first.
Thomas was shot in the basement.
Diane saw him fall.
Wade forced her to help clean the room.
She never checked whether Thomas was actually dead.
Then she found his blood on the floor weeks later, but no body.
She told herself Wade had moved him.
Rachel believed Thomas survived.
The military investigators examined the blood traces.
One sample was four years old.
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Another was less than forty-eight hours old.
Thomas Hale had been inside the basement two days before the wedding.
