Chapter 5 - THE ROAD IN IRELAND
James Hart died on a narrow road outside Galway.
His rental car left the pavement during heavy rain and struck a stone barrier.
Irish police initially ruled it an accident.
The road was dangerous.
Visibility was poor.
James had traces of a sleep medication in his blood.
Amelia assumed he took something during the flight.
He rarely slept well while traveling.
But the medication was not prescribed to him.
Claire had the same medication.
Detective Reed contacted Irish authorities.
They reopened the toxicology review.
Airport security footage showed Claire meeting James at Portland International Airport before his departure.
She handed him a paper cup.
She claimed it was coffee.
James carried the cup through security.
The gate camera showed him drinking from it.
The dose in his blood was not fatal.
But it could cause delayed drowsiness, slowed reaction, and confusion.
Claire denied adding anything.
Evelyn admitted she knew Claire planned to confront him.
“I thought she was going to convince him not to report the deed.”
“Did you know about the medication?” Amelia asked.
They met at Rebecca’s office with police present.
Evelyn looked twenty years older than she had before the fire.
“No.”
“Did you know Claire forged my name?”
“Yes.”
“Did you help her?”
“I gave her old documents with your signature.”
Amelia stared.
Evelyn began crying.
“I thought she was refinancing temporarily.”
“You thought my home was collateral.”
“I thought we would pay it back.”
“With what?”
“Claire said the business had contracts.”
“It didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
Amelia turned away.
Evelyn said, “I should have met you at the airport.”
The sentence was so small compared to everything else that Amelia almost laughed.
“You should have stopped her months ago.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of losing money?”
“Of losing the family.”
“You chose which daughter to save.”
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Amelia did not comfort her.
Investigators reconstructed the fire.
Claire’s contractor installed the relay behind the electrical panel.
He claimed she said it was part of a remote energy-monitoring system.
She paid him cash.
Phone data showed her logging into a control application seventeen minutes after Amelia entered the house.
The relay overloaded wiring near the kitchen.
Claire insisted she only intended to damage the electrical system and force an insurance claim.
She claimed she believed the house was empty.
But Amelia’s flight information had changed.
Her original connection was canceled.
She arrived six hours earlier than scheduled.
Claire said she did not know.
Then investigators found the family group chat.
Take an Uber, Claire wrote.
Mom’s tired and Ben has work early.
The message proved she knew Amelia had landed.
It did not prove she knew Amelia was already home when the fire started.
The control app showed a live status signal from the device.
The house alarm system had also registered the front door opening.
Claire’s phone received both notifications.
She activated the relay anyway.
The case changed from insurance fraud and arson to attempted murder.
But Amelia still needed to know whether Claire had caused James’s death.
Detective Reed warned her that answers from another country would come slowly.
Irish investigators needed formal requests.
Toxicology samples had to be reexamined.
Airport footage required international evidence procedures.
The rental car’s damaged onboard computer had been stored, but no one knew whether its data could be recovered.
For Amelia, every delay felt personal.
She had already buried James beneath a conclusion marked accidental.
Now the paperwork of that conclusion moved more slowly than grief.
Rebecca encouraged her to create a timeline.
Not only for prosecutors.
For herself.
They covered one wall of the temporary apartment with dates.
The forged deed.
Claire’s first call to James.
James’s title alert.
His meeting with the private investigator.
The airport coffee.
The flight to Dublin.
The missed solicitor appointment.
The crash.
Amelia’s arrival.
The relay activation.
When she saw the sequence physically, she noticed a gap.
James had scheduled a video call with her from Galway the night before he died.
He never joined.
At the time, she assumed he was busy.
His hotel records showed he had returned to his room.
A hallway camera showed a woman leaving the room twenty minutes later.
The image was unclear.
Claire was in Portland.
Madison Cole was in Portland.
The woman was neither.
Irish police identified her as Fiona Mercer, an estate researcher hired by Claire’s company through a shell vendor.
Fiona admitted she searched James’s room for documents.
She found nothing.
She said James arrived while she was still inside.
He threatened to call police.
Fiona told Claire.
Claire replied in a voice message:
Keep him away from the solicitor until tomorrow.
Fiona denied touching James’s medication or car.
Her testimony did not prove murder.
It proved the scheme followed him across the ocean.
James was not simply unlucky on a wet road.
He was being watched, delayed, and pressured by people acting for Claire.
That realization changed Amelia’s grief.
Before, she imagined his final hours as lonely.
Now she imagined him alert, suspicious, trying to protect her while feeling his body betray him.
She hated Claire most in those moments.
Then she hated herself for wanting hatred to feel useful.
It did not.
It only gave pain a direction.
Irish police found a deleted voice message on James’s cloud account.
He recorded it from the rental car shortly before the crash.
“Ames, I feel wrong. I pulled over once. Claire gave me something at the airport. If this is connected to Hawthorne, tell Reed—”
The message ended with the sound of a horn.
James knew.
May you like
He tried to warn her.
He died before he could finish.
