Chapter 7 - No One Will Believe You
Beckett entered through the side door.
He removed his gloves slowly.
“Did you access the foundation server?”
Claire kept her face still.
“No.”
He placed her deleted report on the table.
The system had recorded the terminal identification.
“You’re not good at lying.”
“You’ve had more practice.”
For one second, surprise crossed his face.
Then he smiled.
“Where is the drive?”
“What drive?”
Beckett searched her purse.
Then her coat pockets.
He did not find the encrypted device sewn inside the hem.
Claire moved toward the hallway.
He blocked her.
“You went to the police. You tried to contact the board. Now you’re stealing confidential files.”
“I copied evidence of crimes.”
“What crimes?”
“Payments to Gannon. Voss. Mercer.”
Beckett’s smile disappeared.
Claire continued.
“You already wrote a psychiatric file about me.”
“It’s a contingency plan.”
“For when I tell the truth?”
“For when you become dangerous.”
She tried to pass him.
He caught her wrist.
“You have no idea what you’re attacking.”
“I know what you are.”
Beckett pulled her closer.
“My family owns half the county’s debt. The sheriff has worked with us for twenty years. Judge Voss officiated our wedding.”
“That doesn’t make you untouchable.”
“It makes you unbelievable.”
He took her phone and unlocked it using the passcode he had watched her enter.
He deleted the message to Margaret.
What he did not know was that Margaret had already screenshotted it.
Beckett confined Claire to the upstairs bedroom.
He told the housekeeper his wife was experiencing a breakdown.
Dr. Mercer arrived before midnight.
Claire refused to open the door.
Through the wood, Mercer said he could authorize emergency treatment if she presented a danger.
“You have never examined me.”
“I have reviewed extensive collateral information.”
“From my husband.”
“From people concerned about you.”
Claire understood that once they placed her inside a private facility, the financial evidence would be called part of a delusion.
She searched the room.
The windows were sealed except for a narrow bathroom opening.
Her hidden drive remained inside the winter coat Beckett had left downstairs.
She needed to escape with it.
At 1:30 a.m., Beckett unlocked the bedroom.
He said she could sleep in the guesthouse if she apologized and surrendered the drive.
Claire told him she had sent copies to the state.
It was a bluff.
He believed her.
His face changed.
He dragged her downstairs, pushed her through the front doorway, and threw her shoes into the snow beyond the porch.
“Go tell whoever you want.”
Then he locked the door.
Claire stood barefoot in a torn nightgown beneath the winter storm.
Beckett spoke through the security camera.
“No one will believe you.”
What he did not know was that Claire had activated a silent emergency message on an old watch Margaret had given her.
May you like
Margaret was already driving toward the mansion.
👉 Beckett believed the storm would erase the evidence of what he had done, but Margaret arrived before the cold could silence Claire.
