Chapter 4 - JENNIFER SLOAN
Jennifer Sloan answered on the first call.
Donnelly put her on speaker.
“I knew someone would eventually call about him,” Jennifer said.
Her voice was steady.
“What happened in Colorado?” I asked.
Silence.
Then:
“Daniel and I were engaged.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
“He planned the trip?”
“Yes.”
“Was there insurance?”
“I found out later.”
Jennifer described a mountain lodge, a narrow trail, and an argument over money.
She remembered Daniel standing behind her.
Then falling.
She survived because a tree stopped her.
Daniel called it an accident.
She believed him for six months.
Then she found paperwork.
An accidental-death policy.
A beneficiary designation.
Her forged signature.
“I went to police.”
“What happened?”
“They said the fall could not be proven intentional.”
“Did Daniel know you reported him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“Disappeared from my life.”
Then Jennifer said something that changed everything.
“He had a phrase.”
I looked at Donnelly.
“What phrase?”
“When he got angry, he would say, ‘A marriage needs rules.’”
My stomach turned.
Same words.
Same performance.
Daniel was not losing control.
He was repeating a script.
Donnelly asked whether Jennifer knew Rebecca.
“No.”
“Did Daniel ever mention cruises?”
“Yes. He said the ocean was the only place he could breathe.”
The irony made me sick.
After the call, the captain brought us a recovered surveillance clip.
Daniel in the casino the previous night.
He was not gambling.
He was meeting a man.
The man slid something beneath the table.
A small envelope.
Daniel paid him in cash.
Ship facial recognition identified the man as a private insurance investigator named Leonard Fisk.
Fisk was onboard under another name.
Security detained him.
Inside his cabin were copies of my insurance policy.
Rebecca’s.
Jennifer’s.
And a fourth.
A woman named Marisol Vega.
Donnelly stared at the file.
“We don’t have this name in our case.”
I asked, “Alive?”
Nobody knew.
The policy had been paid out six years earlier.
Cause of death:
Boating accident.
No body recovered.
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Daniel had not been unlucky in love.
He had built a business model around women who disappeared.
