Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO HELPED LURE HER THERE
Ashley finally agreed to an interview with her attorney present.
Emma did not attend.
She received a summary later.
Ashley admitted the affair.
Eight months.
It began after Michael’s first real-estate project started failing.
He told Ashley his marriage had become “financially strategic.”
He claimed Emma intended to divorce him after the baby was born.
Ashley believed him because she wanted to.
Then Michael began talking about Emma’s insurance.
At first as a joke.
Then as arithmetic.
Fifty million dollars would erase his investment debt.
Protect his lifestyle.
Allow him to repay Ashley.
Create enough liquidity that nobody would ever know how close he had come to insolvency.
Ashley claimed she thought it was fantasy.
Until Michael asked her to help arrange a weekend trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.
He told Emma it would be their last quiet weekend before the baby.
He told Ashley to meet them at the overlook so Emma would discover the affair there.
“Why?” the investigator asked.
Ashley looked down.
“Because he said he wanted Emma emotionally upset.”
“For what purpose?”
“So if something happened, people would believe she wasn’t thinking clearly.”
That sentence changed the case.
Ashley admitted helping create the confrontation.
She had sent Emma a message that morning from an anonymous account showing a photograph of Michael and Ashley kissing.
Emma confronted Michael.
Michael suggested they drive somewhere private to talk.
Ashley followed separately.
Ashley knew he wanted Emma distressed near a dangerous place.
“What did you think he would do?”
Ashley cried.
“I thought he was going to scare her.”
“You invested four hundred thousand dollars with a man talking about his wife’s life insurance.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds like you knew.”
Ashley covered her face.
Then came the beacon.
Michael had taken it from Ashley’s backpack and told her they would not need it.
Twenty minutes before Emma arrived, Ashley retrieved it from his truck.
“Why?”
Ashley’s voice dropped.
“Because he asked me how long I thought someone could survive down there.”
That was when she understood.
She activated the beacon inside her coat pocket before Emma reached the edge.
But she stayed.
She did not warn Emma.
She did not walk away.
She did not call 911 while they still had intermittent service.
She hoped someone else would arrive and stop what she had helped set in motion.
Emma read the summary twice.
Her mother asked:
“Does that make you feel differently about her?”
“Yes.”
Susan waited.
“How?”
“Worse.”
May you like
Because Ashley had known.
And she had outsourced courage to a rescue beacon.
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