You have no idea what Sarah has done.”
The sentence settled into the foyer.
Nathan looked at the envelope.
Until that moment, Marcus could have claimed he knew nothing about it.
Now his own voice had connected him to the evidence.
Nathan returned to the microphone.
“You told me there were no papers.”
Marcus realized his mistake.
For the first time, fear moved across his face.
Then he changed tactics.
“You think a few photocopies will matter? Sarah signed everything.
She lies when she panics.
She will tell the police whatever you want because she is desperate to get back into your mansion.”
Nathan looked through the glass wall at the storm.
“You still haven’t told me where she is.”
Marcus pulled on the iron gate with both hands.
“Open it.”
“No.”
“They are my children.”
“They are hypothermic because they had to escape you.”
“You know nothing about my family.”
Nathan’s voice became very calm.
“I know you insured four people without their consent.
I know you forged my sister’s signature.
And I know you drove through a blizzard looking for the evidence instead of calling an ambulance for your missing children.”
Marcus stopped pulling the gate.
In the distance, sirens rose beneath the wind.
He turned toward the road.
For one second, Nathan thought he might surrender.
Instead, Marcus ran to his SUV.
The tires spun before catching the snow-covered pavement.
The vehicle slid sideways, struck a bank and vanished down the mountain road moments before the first emergency lights appeared through the trees.
Nathan did not open the gate until the deputies identified themselves through the camera.
Paramedics rushed inside.
They took Owen and Ethan first, placing tiny oxygen masks over their faces.
One medic examined Lily’s hands while another checked her temperature.
“She needs a hospital now,” the medic said.
“All three of them do.”
Nathan placed the envelope inside a clear evidence bag while a deputy watched.
He kept photographs of every page on his secure phone and handed over the original.
“This is not a custody dispute,” Nathan said.
“My sister may still be inside their house.”
The deputy scanned the first page, then called for an immediate welfare check and a roadblock on every route off the mountain.
Nathan rode in the ambulance with Lily.
The girl drifted in and out of consciousness beneath warm blankets.
Whenever she woke, she asked the same question.
“Did you find Mommy?”
Nathan gave her the only honest answer he had.
“They are looking for her, and I am not leaving you.”
At the Kane house, deputies found the front door open and the interior destroyed.
Drawers had been emptied.
Furniture had been overturned.
In the kitchen, food still burned in a pan, as though the family’s ordinary evening had ended in a single violent minute.
They called Sarah’s name and heard a faint answer from behind a locked utility-room door.
She was alive.
Marcus had taken her phone and shut her inside before chasing the children.
