Chapter 2 - THE FOURTH NAME
The first three names were Melissa Walker, Caroline Price, and Julia Hayes.
My name appeared beneath them.
Rebecca Walker.
Each name had a date.
The first three ended with the word CLOSED.
Mine said PENDING.
Anna placed the box on my bedside table.
“I found it after the cemetery caretaker called me,” she said. “Someone tried to remove Mom’s coffin last night.”
Caleb stood in the doorway between hospital security officers.
He denied knowing anything about the box.
The lie came too quickly.
Dr. Reed asked security to escort him from the floor.
He pointed at me.
“You’ll regret this.”
Anna moved toward him before the officers could.
“You pushed her.”
Caleb laughed.
“She told you that?”
“The staircase camera told me.”
His smile disappeared.
Anna had retrieved a memory card from our mother’s old jewelry safe. It contained footage from my house security system.
I had never known a camera faced the staircase.
My mother installed it after visiting us a year earlier. She told Anna privately that Caleb’s explanations for my bruises did not make sense.
The recording showed the confrontation.
I held the forged property documents.
Caleb blocked the stairs.
He grabbed my shoulder and shoved.
The camera captured my body hitting every step.
Then it captured Caleb watching from above.
He did not call for help.
He walked downstairs, checked my pulse, photographed me, and returned to his office.
Eleven minutes later, he called 911.
Detective Lena Ortiz arrived before sunset.
She took the recording, the voice recorder, the forged suicide statement, and the metal box.
Caleb was questioned but not immediately arrested. His attorney claimed the staircase footage lacked context and the hospital recording resulted from a medication-induced dispute.
He left the building under police observation.
Before leaving, he looked through the glass doors at me.
He tapped his wrist twice.
Our private signal.
Time is running out.
I had seen him use it before every major threat.
Ortiz opened the metal box.
Inside were three wedding rings, three death certificates, and a flash drive.
All three dead women had been connected to Caleb.
Melissa was his first wife.
Caroline was his former business partner.
Julia was his college girlfriend.
Caleb told me he had never been married.
According to the certificates, Melissa died after falling from a balcony.
Caroline died in a car crash.
Julia died from an overdose.
Each death occurred after she transferred property or insurance benefits to Caleb.
The flash drive was encrypted.
Anna knew the password.
Our mother’s birthday.
The first video showed Melissa standing inside a hospital room with one leg in a cast.
Caleb stood beside her bed wearing a white dress shirt.
He said, “Get up. You’re wasting my money.”
My blood turned cold.
The words were identical.
Melissa cried that her leg was broken.
Caleb grabbed her arm.
The video ended before he struck her.
The second clip showed Caroline in a rehabilitation center.
Both wrists were bandaged.
Caleb leaned over her bed.
“You don’t tell me no.”
Again, the same words.
This was not spontaneous anger.
It was a script.
A ritual.
Ortiz opened the third file.
Julia sat in a wheelchair inside a private clinic.
A woman stood beside Caleb.
His mother, Lenora Walker.
She held documents while Julia cried.
The same Walker crest appeared on the envelope.
Ortiz paused the footage.
“Your husband’s mother died ten years ago.”
“That’s what he told me.”
Anna looked at the metal box.
Our mother had uncovered the pattern.
Then she died unexpectedly six months earlier.
Caleb said she suffered a stroke.
Now I wondered who had been with her when it happened.
A new message appeared on Anna’s phone.
Unknown sender.
STOP OPENING GRAVES.
Attached was a photograph of Anna entering the hospital.
May you like
Someone had taken it minutes earlier.
They were watching us.
