Released at 24, She Went Back to Her Father’s Old Body Shop — Under the Lift Sat a Welded Trunk
Chapter 2
It took nearly an hour.
By the time Claire finally broke through the welded seam, her hands were shaking.
The trunk opened with a metallic groan.
Inside were three cardboard boxes.
A leather notebook.
Several photographs.
And a sealed envelope with her name on it.
Claire stopped breathing.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
Her father’s.
She picked up the envelope.
Claire.
Nothing else.
She opened it carefully.
Inside was a photograph.
Claire stared at it.
It showed her father’s body shop six years earlier.
But there was something strange about the photograph.
A black SUV was parked behind the building.
Claire recognized it.
She had seen that vehicle before.
The night she was arrested.
Her stomach tightened.
She turned the photograph over.
A date was written on the back.
October 17. 2019.
The night everything happened.
Claire had been eighteen.
Her father had been found unconscious inside the shop.
A customer had been robbed.
Money was missing.
And Claire had been arrested because her fingerprints were found on the safe.
She had always insisted someone had framed her.
Nobody believed her.
Claire picked up the leather notebook.
The first pages contained ordinary repair records.
Then the entries changed.
Someone is using the shop after midnight.
Another page:
I saw the same vehicle again.
Then:
Claire doesn’t know. I need to keep it that way.
Claire’s heart pounded.
Her father had known something was happening.
She turned another page.
Several names had been written down.
Some were crossed out.
One wasn’t.
- Morgan.
Claire froze.
Her brother.
Daniel.
She hadn’t spoken to him in almost six years.
He had visited her twice in prison.
Then stopped.
Claire turned the page.
Nothing.
She turned another.
A single sentence appeared.
If anything happens to me, look beneath the lift.
Claire stared at the words.
She had already found the trunk.
But why had her father hidden it there?
She reached for the next photograph.
This one showed her father standing beside a police cruiser.
Sheriff Mason Reed stood beside him.
Claire recognized him immediately.
He had been the sheriff who arrested her.
But in the photograph, her father wasn’t angry.
He was pointing toward something behind the shop.
Claire enlarged the image on her phone.
There was a second vehicle in the background.
The same black SUV.
Claire’s breathing became shallow.
Then she heard a car outside.
She froze.
Footsteps approached the shop.
The door handle moved.
Claire grabbed the notebook.
The door opened.
A man stepped inside.
“Claire?”
She recognized him.
Ethan Brooks.
Her father’s former apprentice.
He looked at the open trunk.
Then at Claire.
His face went pale.
“You found it.”
