novelraw Chapter 179: Who did I bury
Chapter 179: Who did I bury
Nathan and Alex moved fast. They didn’t take the company car; they took a plain black one so no one would notice them leaving the building. Nathan sat in the back, staring out the window, but he wasn’t seeing the city. He was thinking about that night. He was thinking about how he had spent years believing the driver had just disappeared into thin air.
"How did we miss him, Alex?" Nathan asked, his voice low. "How does a man stay in a state prison for nearly three years without us finding out?"
"If he’s using a fake name and someone in the system is getting paid to keep it quiet, it’s easy," Alex said, keeping his eyes on the road. "The police didn’t look hard enough because they wanted the case closed. They called it a hit-and-run and moved on."
Nathan gripped his knees. "He said he took her to the hospital. He said he left her there. All this time, I thought she was alone on that road. I thought she was waiting for me."
"We’ll find out the truth soon, sir," Alex replied.
When they arrived at the prison, the gray stone walls looked cold and ugly. Nathan felt a knot in his stomach. He hated this place, but he needed the answers.
Alex stayed, checking the car’s locks. "I’ll stay here and keep the engine running. If anything feels wrong, get out."
Nathan nodded and walked inside. After the guards checked him, he was led to a small, dark room with a glass wall. A man was brought in. He looked tired and old, with messy hair and a scar on his cheek. He sat down and picked up the phone.
"You’re Nathan Keith," the man said. His voice was like rough.
"And you’re the one who was driving the car," Nathan said, his voice shaking with anger. "Why did you call me?"
The man leaned in. "Because I’m tired of being the fall guy. I was paid to hit your girl, but I didn’t leave her to die on the road. I wasn’t that cold."
"You abandoned her!" Nathan hissed.
"I took her to the hospital," the driver snapped back. "The back entrance. I was told to leave her with a man in a suit who was already waiting there. I thought he was a doctor. He took her, gave me a bag of cash, and told me to vanish."
Nathan felt a cold chill. He remembered the funeral. He remembered the body he had buried. "If she was at the hospital, then who did I bury?"
The man shrugged. "I don’t know about that. All I know is that a week later, I was picked up for a crime I didn’t do and thrown in here. The payments to my family just stopped. I’m done being a puppet, Keith."
"Who was the man in the suit?" Nathan asked, leaning against the glass.
"I didn’t get a name. But I saw him wheel her into a restricted area. He didn’t look like he was trying to save her life. He looked like he was taking a package." The driver looked around nervously. "I want fifty thousand. You get my family out of the city, and I’ll give you the name of the guy who paid me to hit the car in the first place."
Nathan stood up. His head was spinning. Everything he thought he knew about the accident was a lie. Fiona hadn’t died in a wreck. She had been handed over to someone in a suit at the hospital.
"I’ll get your money," Nathan said, his voice sounding dead. "But if you’re lying, you’ll never leave this place."
He walked out and got back into the car. Alex looked at him, worried. "What did he say?"
"He didn’t leave her on the road, Alex," Nathan said, staring straight ahead. "He took her to the hospital. Someone was waiting for her. The person we buried... it wasn’t her."
Nathan gripped the dashboard so hard his knuckles turned white.
"We need to find out who was working at that hospital that night," Nathan ordered. "Now."
Alex moved closer, his voice dropping into a low, serious tone. "I’ve studied Natasha, sir, and one thing I can say for sure is she’d go to any length to get you. She’s not dumb, Nathan. She’s calculated. She’s the type to play the long game, waiting for the perfect moment to strike while making everyone think she’s the one grieving the most."
Nathan leaned back in his chair, his eyes cold. "Alright then. I want to know where she was that day of the accident and after the burial. I want her entire timeline. If she was anywhere near that hospital or that building, I want to know about it."
Alex nodded, his fingers already moving across his tablet. "I’ll pull her credit card records, her GPS data from her car, and any security footage from her apartment complex. If she slipped away even for an hour, I’ll find the gap."
"She was always there, Alex," Nathan muttered, staring at the empty space on his desk. "Every time I turned around after the funeral, she was there to ’comfort’ me. It felt like she was everywhere. I thought it was kindness. Now it feels like she was just making sure the lie stayed buried."
"If she’s behind the swap, she had to be at that restricted building to oversee it," Alex said. "A plan that big requires her eyes on the ground. I’ll check the cell towers near the government building from that night. If her phone pinged anywhere near there while she told you she was ’at home crying,’ then we have her."
Nathan gripped the edge of his desk. "Find it. I want to know every move she made while I was putting a stranger in the ground."
"I’m on it, sir," Alex promised. "But we have to be careful. If she knows we’re looking into her past, the whole thing might blow off." Alex said and started the car, driving off.
Nathan stared out the window as the prison faded into the distance. His mind was a mess. The driver’s words kept repeating in his head, about the hospital, the man in the suit, and the fact that the person he buried wasn’t Fiona.
He looked over at Alex, who was focused on the road. "Alex, turn the car around. We aren’t going back to the office."
Alex glanced at him, looking surprised. "What about the office, sir? We have people waiting, and we still need to check those bank records."
"Forget the office. Drive me to the house," Nathan said, his voice hard.
"The house? Sir, we just got into the city."
"If she’s Fiona, I’m not letting her out of my sight again."
He wasn’t thinking about business anymore. He was thinking about the two years and six months he had wasted crying over a grave that didn’t even hold his wife. Every second she spent in that house alone felt like a second he was losing her all over again.
Alex sighed but didn’t argue. He knew that look on Nathan’s face. "Alright, but you need someone at the office to handle the fallout and keep an eye on Natasha’s movements."
"That’s why you’re not coming with me," Nathan said. He looked at the highway exit coming up. "You can get off at the highway and take a cab to the office. I want you to act like everything is normal."
Alex slowed the car down and pulled over to the side of the road near the exit. He looked at Nathan seriously. "Sir, if you go back there now, you’re going to want to tell her everything. You have to stay calm. If she’s being monitored or if she’s not ready to remember, you could break her."
"I know what I’m doing, Alex," Nathan said.
Alex got out of the car and handed the keys to Nathan. "I’ll be at my desk in twenty minutes. I’ll start looking into Natasha’s timeline like you asked. Call me if anything happens."
Nathan didn’t say anything else. He slid into the driver’s seat and watched Alex walk toward a spot to call a cab. As soon as the door was shut, Nathan drove like a madman back toward the woods, his mind filled with images of the hospital, he wasn’t the ’Ice King’ anymore. He was just a man trying to get back to the woman he had lost.