THE WRONG BRIDE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

Amelia’s thumb hovered cover the screen for one more second before she finally answered, bracing herself for a voice that might confirm everything she was suddenly terrified to believe. “Delphine.”“Amelia.” Delphine’s voice came through right, breathless, nothing like the calm composed woman who’d once lectured her about wedding nerves over breakfast. “I need you to listen to me before you decide anything. Before Adrian decides anything.”“We know about the shell company,” Amelia said, watching Adrian’s face carefully for any reaction. “The one registered under your name. Funding Desmond Cole’s operation. Silence stretches on the line, long enough that Amelia wondered if the call had dropped. “Say that again,” Delphine said, her voice suddenly very quiet.Amelia repeated it, slower this time, watching Adrian pace a tight, furious circle across the safe house floor.“I only just found out myself," Delphine said finally, her voice hollow with something that sounded, unmistakably, li

“Get down.”Adrian slammed into Amelia before she’d fully registered what had happened, pulling her beneath the kitchen table as a second shot cracked through the broken window, embedding itself in the cabinet above them in a spray of splintered wood. Marcus Ellery lay motionless on the floor beside them, his unfinished statement soaked through with blood, the pen still loosely clutched in his fingers. “He's gone,” Amelia whispered, horror closing her throat. “Adrian, he's gone.”“I know.” Adrian’s voice was tight, controlled, already scanning the small kitchen for any other way out. “We need to move. Now, before whoever’s out there decides we’re worth a third bullet.”They half crawled, half ran through the house’s back hallway, out through a rear door into an overgrown yard, Adrian pulling Amelia low behind a fence line as they made their way to the car parked two streets over. No further shots came. Whoever had fired clearly considered the job finished the moment Marcus Ellery st

The cannery sat abandoned at the edge of the industrial district, its corrugated walls streaked with rust, windows long since broken and boarded over, the whole structure hunched against the darkening sky like something that had given up pretending to be useful decades ago. Amemia crouched beside Adrian in the shadow of a loading dock across the street, watching the building for any sign of movement. Delphine and Margaret waited a block back with the car, ready to move the moment they face the signal. Four hours remained on Desmond’s deadline. It felt like nothing at all. “Two guards,” Adrian murmured, lowering the binoculars he’d borrowed from Delphine’s eness supply of useful, unexplained resources. “Front entrance, rotating every fifteen minutes. No visible cameras, which either means they’re overconfident or the cameras are better hidden than I can spot from here.”“Overconfident,” Amelia said. “A man who just kidnapped a Kingston and a Carter in under two minutes doesn't worry

Sofia hadn't slept over a day, and it showed in the right, restless energy with which she paced Margaret’s kitchen, phone pressed to her ear, a legal pad covered in hastily scrawled notes spread across the counter in front of her. “I need you to trust me,” she said, for what felt like the tenth time in the last hour. “I know how this looks. I know you have no reason to believe a name you've never heard before, calling you at midnight about a case that isn't officially open yet. But detective, if you don't move in the next hour, a woman is going to die, and it's going to be because someone decided the paperwork wasn't clean enough to act on.”Margaret watched from the doorway, arms crossed, exhaustion carved into every line of her face. Delphine sat at the table, staring at nothing, the weight of the last twenty-four hours finally, visibly cracking through her composure. Sofia listened for a long moment, then exhaled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “Thank you. I’ll send e

They ran. Adrian led, pulling Amelia along the narrow corridor with Olivia close behind the alarm’s shriek making it possible to hear anything beyond their own ragged breathing and pounding footsteps. Red emergency lights strobed against corrugated steel walls, throwing the terminal’s maze of corridors into a disorienting, fractured chaos. “This way…” Adrian veered toward a door marked with a faded exit sign, wrenching it open onto a loading dock that opened, mercifully, onto open air and darkness beyond. They burst out into the night just as the sound of vehicles reached them, tires on gravel, headlights sweeping across the dock in wide, searching arcs. For one terrible second, Amelia thought Desmond’s men had already circled around to cut their escape. Then she saw the flashing lights, red and blue, cutting through the dark, and heard Sofia’s voice, hoarse and disbelieving, shouting her name from somewhere near the vehicles. “Amelia! Adrian!”Detective Reyes’s team moved with