Only Her Touch のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 40

The property sat forty minutes outside the city, half swallowed by overgrown hedges that had clearly gone untended for years, the kind of quiet, forgotten place Alicia imagined a frightened young widow might have chosen specifically because nobody would think to look for her there. "Carla's investigator confirmed the current owner bought it at auction eight years ago," Roberto said, parking the car at the edge of a cracked gravel driveway. "Nobody's lived here full time since. It's mostly used as a rental for weekend visitors now." Alicia stepped out into the warm afternoon air, studying the faded, once elegant house with its peeling paint and shuttered windows. "If Isabel Duarte lived here thirty one years ago, whoever's left to remember her is going to be old enough now that we might not have much time to find them." They found their answer sooner than expected. An elderly woman tending a small vegetable garden two properties down straightened slowly at the sound of their car, wat

The drive to the marina felt endless, Roberto's knuckles white on the wheel, Alicia's own heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing useful left to say until they knew what they were driving toward.Security lights came into view first, then the flashing gleam of a private dock, then Priya's voice crackling urgently through the car's speaker, patched in from wherever she'd been coordinating the last frantic minutes."Marsh is alive," she said, before either of them could ask. "Our security team reached the marina two minutes ahead of you. He's shaken, but unharmed. The shot went into the water, not into him. It looks like it was meant to frighten rather than kill."Alicia felt the breath she'd been holding release all at once, relief crashing through her so fast it left her briefly dizzy. Beside her, Roberto's shoulders dropped visibly, some of the rigid tension finally easing from his frame."And Ignacio?" he asked."Gone before

Alicia spread both letters across the table, her mother's faded page beside Isabel's cramped, hurried scrawl, and felt the old, familiar thrill of a puzzle finally beginning to settle into her chest."Look," she said, pointing to a cluster of numbers near the top of Josephine's letter. "Three digits, then a partial word, then two more digits. Isabel's note follows the exact same rhythm." She traced her finger down the page, matching pattern to pattern. "I think the numbers correspond to letters, counted from whatever word follows them. It's simple once you see the shape of it, which is probably the point. Simple enough for two frightened women to memorize a shared system without ever writing the actual key down anywhere."Roberto leaned closer, watching her work with the same quiet fascination he always seemed to reserve for moments like this, and Marsh hovered nearby, restless with a nervous energy Alicia recognized as the particular anxiety of someone finally close to an answer he'd

Roberto read the signed document three times before the shape of it finally settled into something he could fully understand."It's an affidavit," Carla said, scanning it over his shoulder with sharp, professional focus. "A witnessed statement, notarized two years ago, describing a conversation Mrs. Ignacio overheard between her husband and an unnamed associate discussing, in her words, quote, arrangements made to ensure certain accounts remained permanently untraceable." She looked up, something like awe breaking through her usual composure. "This isn't just a signature, Roberto. This is a legal statement. She built this herself, in secret, years before Alicia ever stood on that terrace."Alicia stared at the document, tears still drying on her cheeks from her mother's letter, disbelief now layering over the grief. "She never told me. Weeks of quiet conversations, and she never once mentioned she'd already been doing this on her own.""Maybe she was protecting you," Roberto said gent

Alicia felt her whole body go cold at Priya's words, the room around her narrowing down to nothing but the tense, static filled silence still crackling faintly through the speaker."What do you mean, he knows?" Roberto demanded, already moving toward the door, keys in hand before Alicia had even fully registered him standing."His tone shifted," Priya said, urgency sharpening every word. "He stopped mid-sentence, asked her to walk with him toward the east wing, away from where the household staff usually gather. The audio's getting patchy. I think there's some kind of interference near that part of the house.""Deliberate interference," Alicia said grimly, already following Roberto toward the elevator. "If he suspected her, he'd want to move somewhere he controls the signal."Priya's voice crackled back, tighter now. "My team's fifteen minutes out. I already dispatched them the moment the tone shifted, but the estate's private security will see them coming from half a mile away if the