Chapter 4: The Ghosts That Won’t Stay Buried
Three months later, Lila was sitting on the porch of the lake house, sipping a cup of coffee, as the sun rose over the lake. The house was still dusty, but she’d started cleaning it up, slowly, one room at a time. She’d quit her job at the diner, and she’d started working with a local nonprofit, helping foster kids find safe homes. Mia and her mom had moved into a small cottage on the property, and Mia was attending a local elementary school, making new friends.
The powerful guest, whose name was Jake Carter, had become her legal guardian, and he’d helped her file a new wrongful death lawsuit against the Voss family. The case was set to go to trial in six months, and Lila was nervous, but she knew she had to do it. She owed it to her mom, she owed it to herself, she owed it to every foster kid who’d ever been told to keep quiet about the things they’d seen.
That night, she heard a knock on the door. She opened it to find a woman standing on the porch, her hair gray, her face lined with fatigue. “I’m Detective Linda Hale,” she said, holding up a badge. “I’m the lead detective on your mom’s case. I have some news.”
Lila invited her inside, and Detective Hale sat down at the kitchen table, pulling out a stack of files. “We found the original detective who worked the case,” she said. “He confessed last week. He said Elias paid him $50,000 to falsify the report and close the case. He also said that Elias had threatened to kill him and his family if he ever talked about it.”
Lila’s hands shook as she listened. “What happens now?” she asked.
“Elias is going to trial,” Detective Hale said. “We have enough evidence to put him away for life. But there’s something else.”
She pulled out a photo from the file, handing it to Lila. It was a picture of a young boy, around 10 years old, with the same scar across his eyebrow that Jake had. “This is Jake’s son,” she said. “He was kidnapped by Elias’s men two years ago, right after Jake found the hidden camera. Elias held him for three days, threatening to kill him if Jake ever went near the case. Jake hasn’t seen his son since.”
Lila stared at the photo, her heart breaking. “We have to find him,” she said.
Detective Hale nodded. “We’re working on it. We have a tip that he’s being held in a warehouse in downtown Portland. We’re going to raid it tomorrow morning.”
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That night, Lila couldn’t sleep. She thought about Jake, about the way he’d stood up for her at the wedding, about the promise he’d made to his sister. She thought about her mom, about the way she’d never given up, even when everyone had told her to. She thought about Mia, about the way she’d held her hand when she’d needed it most.
At 2 a.m., she grabbed her keys and drove to the warehouse in downtown Portland. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going, she didn’t call the police. She just knew that she had to help Jake find his son, that she had to do something to make things right.
