CHAPTER 27 — WHERE REBECCA WENT
The photograph from 2003 gave George and Mara their first real direction.
Rebecca Kant had survived the night her family disappeared, and Daniel Vale had helped her escape before the people connected to Blackwood Road could find her.
But knowing that Rebecca survived was not the same as knowing where she went.
George returned to the documents inside the metal box and began searching for references to new identities, relocation records, and addresses that might have been created after October 1998.
Mara worked through her father's notes, looking for anything David had discovered about Rebecca after she escaped.
For several hours, they found nothing. Then Mara noticed a repeated set of initials appearing beside several entries in David's notebook.
They did not match Rebecca's name, but the dates surrounding them corresponded with the years immediately after the Kant family's disappearance.
Beneath one entry, David had written: “She is alive. New name. Do not contact directly.”
Mara stared at the sentence. Her father had found her.
The next clue came from an old photograph taken in 2003.
Rebecca was standing outside a small building in a town several hours away from Blackwood Road.
The location was difficult to identify, but a sign in the background provided part of a name.
George searched old business directories and eventually found a match.
The building had once been a community center attached to a small library.
More importantly, an employee photograph from that period contained a woman who looked remarkably similar to Rebecca.
She was older, her hair was different, and she used another name, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
Her name was Rachel Cross. Mara looked at the photograph for several seconds.
“Cross,” she whispered. George immediately thought of Samuel Cross.
“You think they're connected?” Mara nodded.
They couldn't yet prove whether the surname had been chosen because of Samuel or whether it was simply another coincidence, but David's notes suggested that Rebecca's new identity had been carefully constructed.
Whoever helped her had given her a history that could withstand basic investigation.
They began reconstructing Rachel Cross's life.
According to the surviving records, she had arrived in the town in the late 1990s and lived quietly for years.
She had attended local events, worked ordinary jobs, and maintained almost no public presence.
There were no obvious connections to Blackwood Road.
She had never spoken publicly about her childhood and had no recorded relatives nearby.
Yet small inconsistencies appeared everywhere George looked.
Her birth date did not perfectly match the age suggested by the 2003 photograph.
Her earliest employment record began several years after she supposedly moved to the town.
Her medical records were unusually sparse.
Even her original identity documents appeared to have been issued under circumstances that were difficult to verify.
Mara understood what that meant. Rebecca had not simply changed her name.
She had been given an entirely new life.
Then they discovered evidence that someone had continued watching her.
David's notebook contained several addresses connected to Rachel Cross, each followed by a date.
The dates stretched across more than a decade.
At first George thought the entries were simply locations where David had tried to find her.
But the pattern was too precise. Several addresses were not places where Rachel had lived.
They were locations near her home—parking areas, businesses, and public buildings.
David had apparently been documenting surveillance around her rather than merely searching for her.
One entry contained a warning: “Someone else found her.”
Another said: “They know the new name.” Mara felt a chill.
Rebecca had escaped Blackwood Road, but she had never truly escaped the people who had erased her.
The most disturbing discovery came from a series of photographs hidden behind one of David's notebook pages.
They showed Rachel Cross at different stages of her life.
One photograph had been taken outside a grocery store.
Another showed her walking near a train station.
A third showed her entering an apartment building.
None had been taken by David. The photographs had been captured from a distance, often through car windows or from across streets.
Someone had been following her. On the back of one photograph was a date and a handwritten note: “Still watching.”
George stared at it. “Who took these?” Mara shook her head.
“Not my father.” She knew her father's handwriting, and the note had clearly been written later.
Whoever had photographed Rebecca had been tracking her for years.
George then found a document that connected the surveillance directly to Blackwood Road.
It was a photocopy of a property record from 2011.
The name of the person who had requested the record was unfamiliar, but the address being investigated belonged to Rachel Cross.
Someone had been checking her legal identity more than a decade after she had escaped.
Mara looked at George. “They were still looking for her.”
George nodded. “And now they know we've found her.”
The realization came with terrifying speed.
Their investigation had reopened old records.
They had searched Rebecca's name. They had uncovered the hidden room, the List, the tapes, and Daniel's confession.
If the people behind the original operation had continued monitoring Rebecca, they might also be monitoring anyone who came searching for her.
That evening, George received an anonymous message on his phone. There was no number attached. No name. No explanation. It contained only a single sentence:
“Stop looking for Rachel Cross.”
Mara read the message over his shoulder. Neither spoke. A second message arrived seconds later. “She survived because someone protected her.”
Then a third.
“You are putting her back in danger.”
George immediately tried to trace the source, but the messages disappeared from the phone almost as quickly as they had appeared.
Mara looked toward the dark windows of Blackwood House.
“They know,” she whispered. George nodded.
“They know we've found her.” For years, Rebecca had lived under another name, believing the past had been buried.
But now the secrets of Blackwood Road were being uncovered piece by piece, and the people who had erased her identity had a reason to fear her again.
She was not simply a missing child who had survived.
She was a living witness to whatever had happened that night.
George returned to David Vale's final notes and found one final location written beneath the words RACHEL CROSS — DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS NECESSARY.
It was an address in a quiet town several hundred miles away.
Mara looked at him. “That's where she is.”
George nodded. Then he noticed something beside the address that made his blood run cold.
A date.
TODAY.
Someone had recently written it there. Rebecca had survived for decades under another name. She had spent years hiding from the past. But the past had finally found her again. And now, because George and Mara had opened the secrets beneath Blackwood House, Rebecca Kant was in danger once more.