Chapter 2
The knocks came again.
Three.
A pause.
Then two.
Sophie tightened her arms around my neck.
“That means she needs water.”
Vanessa stopped shouting.
Her fear became visible.
Not fear of me.
Fear of the wall.
I carried Sophie toward the hallway.
Vanessa blocked the door.
“You are not opening that closet.”
“Move.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“Who?”
Vanessa looked toward the memory card.
“That woman filled Sophie’s head with lies.”
Another knock came from behind the wall.
Weaker this time.
I placed Sophie inside the hallway bathroom.
“Lock the door.”
“No!”
“I’m staying outside.”
“Vanessa has keys.”
I looked at the frightened child in my arms.
She had learned the house better than I had.
I carried her back into the bedroom and placed her behind the overturned mattress.
“Stay where you can see me.”
Then I entered the closet.
Clothes had been ripped from their hangers.
Boxes lay open.
Vanessa had searched everything.
Behind the dresses stood a tall cedar panel.
I pushed against it.
Nothing.
Sophie pointed toward the floor.
“Mommy’s star.”
A small metal star had been carved into the baseboard.
It matched a symbol Claire used to draw beneath her letters.
Claire was Sophie’s biological mother.
My first wife.
She had supposedly died four years earlier after falling from a hotel balcony.
Vanessa had been Claire’s private assistant.
After the funeral, she helped care for Sophie.
Two years later, I married her.
I pressed the star.
The cedar panel released.
Cold air entered the closet.
Behind the wall was a narrow service corridor.
A woman lay against the bricks.
Her wrists were chained in front of her.
Gray hair covered part of her face.
Her lips were cracked.
I recognized her.
“Nora?”
Nora Hale had been Claire’s aunt.
She disappeared six months after Claire’s funeral.
Police believed she left the country after stealing money from Claire’s estate.
Vanessa had given investigators the bank records.
Nora opened her eyes.
“Daniel.”
I stepped inside.
“How long have you been here?”
“Sixteen days.”
Sophie crawled around the mattress.
“Nana Nora?”
Nora lifted her chained hands.
“Stay back, sweetheart.”
Vanessa ran toward the closet.
I caught her around the waist.
She struck my face.
“Let me go!”
I forced her against the wall.
“You chained an old woman behind my daughter’s bedroom.”
“She broke into our house.”
“Then why didn’t you call police?”
“She threatened Sophie.”
Nora laughed weakly.
“I brought her the card.”
Vanessa turned toward her.
“You were supposed to be dead before he came home.”
The room went silent.
Vanessa realized what she had said.
Sophie began crying again.
I pulled the curtain cord from the wall and tied Vanessa’s wrists to the bedpost.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“I already made one.”
I looked at Sophie.
“I married you.”
I found a small emergency release beside Nora’s chain.
It required a key.
Sophie reached into the pocket of her dress.
She removed a tiny silver pendant.
“Mommy’s star.”
Nora had pushed it through a crack behind the closet three nights earlier.
Sophie had hidden it.
Vanessa found the loose pillow lining but not the pendant.
The key opened Nora’s restraints.
She collapsed against me.
“Claire is alive,” she whispered.
My breath stopped.
Sophie stared at her.
“Mommy Claire?”
Nora nodded.
“Vanessa and Dr. Crane have kept her at Hawthorne House.”
Vanessa pulled against the cord.
“She is lying.”
Nora looked at the black card in my hand.
“Play the file marked BEFORE.”
I inserted the card into Sophie’s tablet.
One video appeared.
Claire sat inside a hotel room.
The date was the night before her supposed death.
She looked directly into the camera.
“If Daniel is watching this, the fall did not kill me.”
“I was pushed.”
“Vanessa opened the balcony door.”
“But she was not the person who gave the order.”
Footsteps thundered through the hallway.
A man called my name.
My older brother Marcus entered the bedroom with two private security officers.
He saw Nora.
Then the memory card.
His face changed.
May you like
“Daniel.”
“Give me the card.”
