Chapter 4 - The Doctor Who Knew Too Much
Dr. Halpern had been treating Claire for nine months.
He had told her she was exhausted. Then anxious. Then depressed. Then "showing signs of paranoid fixation" when she admitted she sometimes felt watched in her own house.
Now she watched him on video step into Sophie's bedroom at one in the morning.
"Why was my psychiatrist in my daughter's room?" Claire asked.
Nobody answered.
Mara zoomed in.
Julian shook Sophie awake. Halpern held a syringe.
The angle didn't show what happened next because Julian blocked the camera, but Sophie's little body jerked and then went still.
Claire turned away.
Arthur grabbed the back of a chair so hard his knuckles whitened.
"Find him."
Mara nodded. "Police are already moving."
They were too late.
Halpern's office was empty. His phone was off. His home security showed him leaving at 4:37 a.m. with two suitcases.
The police issued an alert.
Claire spent the morning with a forensic nurse and a child advocate while Sophie carefully answered questions.
"Daddy said Mommy forgets things," Sophie said. "He said if I told, everybody would think I was lying too."
"Did Ms. Cross ever give you medicine?" the advocate asked.
Sophie nodded.
Claire squeezed her own hands together beneath the table.
"Did anyone tell you why?"
Sophie looked at Claire.
"Vivienne said I had to practice being calm for the judge."
Claire's heart pounded.
"What judge?"
Sophie shrugged. "The one who decides where I live after Mommy goes away."
Arthur walked out of the room.
Claire followed him into the hall.
"Dad."
He faced the window, breathing hard.
"There is something you haven't told me," she said.
Arthur said nothing.
"Dad."
He turned.
For the first time that morning, he looked old.
"Your grandfather's trust has a guardianship clause," he said. "If you die or are declared legally incompetent while Sophie is a minor, control of her trust passes to her surviving parent as guardian until she turns twenty-five."
Claire stared at him.
"How much?"
Arthur hesitated.
"At current value? About one hundred eighty million dollars."
Claire nearly laughed because the number was too obscene to feel real.
"Julian already knows, doesn't he?"
Arthur's silence answered her.
Then Mara approached holding Claire's phone.
"You just got a voicemail from an unknown number."
Claire played it.
A woman's voice whispered through heavy breathing.
"Claire, my name is Lena Ortiz. I was Sophie's night nanny. Julian fired me four months ago. He didn't fire me because I stole anything. He fired me because I saw what he was doing."
May you like
There was a pause.
Then Lena said, "If you want your daughter alive, do not let Arthur control the next move."
