Chapter 4 - The Fugitive Identity
Ethan pulled out his secure laptop and accessed a private legal database.
He typed furiously for a few minutes before turning the screen toward me.
The glowing monitor displayed a decade-old wanted poster from a different state.
The woman in the photograph had darker hair and a thinner face.
However, the cold and lifeless eyes were undeniably identical to Irene's eyes.
Ethan explained that her real name was Vivian Vance.
She was an expert con artist who specialized in infiltrating vulnerable families.
She would marry a naive man, drain the family assets, and vanish without a single trace.
I felt a sickening knot form in my stomach as the truth finally clicked into place.
Tyler was not even her biological son.
He was an orphaned accomplice she had groomed to play the role of a genius child.
They used his fake brilliance to manipulate my mother into giving them everything.
Ethan warned me that Vivian was known to be extremely dangerous when cornered.
She had left a trail of mysterious accidents in her wake over the past fifteen years.
I realized that my brother and my mother were in grave physical danger.
Even though they had betrayed me, I could not let a murderer kill them.
Ethan immediately forwarded the audio recording to Agent Harris at the FBI.
He promised that a tactical team would be dispatched to apprehend her by nightfall.
I finally felt a small glimmer of hope that this nightmare would end today.
My phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket with a new text message.
It was a picture sent from an unknown and untraceable number.
I opened the image and gasped out loud in pure horror.
The photograph showed my beloved candle store completely engulfed in raging orange flames.
Thick black smoke was billowing out of the shattered front windows.
May you like
A second message popped up on the screen a moment later.
It simply read that I was going to burn for trying to ruin her plans.
