Chương 10
Patel said, “What was on the drive?”
“Photographs of me.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca stared.
“You didn’t open the other folders?”
Mara turned.
“What other folders?”
Rebecca went silent.
Evan’s expression sharpened.
“You know what’s on it.”
“No.”
“You know the folder structure.”
Rebecca looked toward the kitchen.
Mara understood.
“When you asked whether Caleb gave me something, you already knew what he had.”
Rebecca’s face tightened.
“I knew what he intended to copy.”
“What?”
“A case archive.”
“Whose case?”
Rebecca took a breath.
“Yours.”
The word landed quietly.
Mara slipped the drive back into her pocket.
Patel said, “We should look at it now.”
Mara nodded.
They returned to the kitchen.
Daniel followed until Mara stopped beside the table.
“Not you.”
His face hardened.
“You dragged me into this.”
“I didn’t.”
“Someone using your number did.”
“That doesn’t give you access to my medical history.”
“We were married.”
“Were.”
Daniel looked as though she had struck him with something smaller and more accurate than a slap.
He went into the living room.
Mara opened the laptop.
Patel stood behind her.
Rebecca stayed across the table.
Evan remained close enough that his sleeve brushed Mara’s arm.
The drive mounted.
The photographs folder was still there.
Below it were three folders Mara had not opened.
BELLWEATHER.
VALE.
ROURKE.
Evan pointed.
“My name.”
“No,” Rebecca said.
“Caleb’s.”
Mara opened BELLWEATHER.
There were scanned forms, spreadsheets, photographs of paper files, and a directory labeled AUDIO.
Patel said, “Don’t alter anything.”
“I’m not.”
Mara opened the first scanned document.
It was an admission form dated nine years earlier.
Patient name: Mara Ellison.
Emergency contact: Helen Ellison.
Mara’s mother.
Diagnosis field: acute dissociative episode following obstetric emergency.
Mara read the phrase three times.
She felt nothing.
That frightened her more than feeling something would have.
Evan whispered, “Mara.”
She scrolled.
A signature appeared at the bottom.
Her signature.
Or something nearly identical.
Rebecca leaned closer.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“The date.”
Mara looked.
The admission date was six days after the photograph in the blue room.
Patel said, “That could be a transfer.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Look at the physician.”
The name was Dr. Samuel Harker.
Rebecca opened another file from the folder.
A death notice appeared.
Samuel Harker had died ten months before Mara’s supposed admission.
Nobody spoke.
Mara stared at the dead doctor’s signature.
There it was.
The first solid crack.
Not in her memory.
In the evidence.
Someone had manufactured at least part of the record.
Evan pulled out a chair and sat.
“So Caleb found forged files.”
Rebecca said, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Mara looked through the directory.
“Then we find what he found.”
She opened the ROURKE folder.
There was only one file inside.
A video.
Evan’s chair scraped backward.
The thumbnail showed Caleb sitting in what looked like a storage room.
A handwritten note beside him displayed a date from two days earlier.
Mara clicked play.
Caleb looked directly toward whoever had positioned the camera.
His face was bruised.
His left eye was swollen nearly shut.
He held up both empty hands.
Then he said, “Mara, if you’re watching this, Lucy Vale is not your daughter.”
Evan made a broken sound beside her.
Caleb leaned closer to the camera.
“But someone needed you to believe she was long enough to make you open this drive.”
The video froze.
A password box appeared across the screen.
Beneath it was a single prompt.
WHAT DID MARA ASK FOR TWICE?
Mara read the question without moving.
The photograph in Officer Patel’s evidence sleeve seemed suddenly louder than the people around her.
SHE ASKED TWICE.
Daniel appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“What happened?”
Mara looked at him.
“What did I ask you to find?”
Daniel’s face went blank.
“In the nightmares.”
Rebecca turned sharply toward him.
“You said she asked where someone was.”
“She did.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Daniel rubbed the side of his jaw.
“It was nine years ago.”
“Try.”
“I am trying.”
Evan pushed away from the table.
“My brother is sitting there with his face beaten in, so maybe try harder.”
Patel stepped between them before the anger could become physical.
“Back up.”
Evan did, barely.
Daniel stared at the frozen image of Caleb.
“I don’t remember exact words.”
Mara said, “You remembered that I asked you to find her.”
“Because that part scared me.”
“Why?”
“You were asleep.”
“I was talking in my sleep?”
“No.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You woke up.”
Something moved at the edge of Mara’s mind.
Darkness.
A bedroom she had not thought about in years.
The apartment before the townhouse, with the radiator that knocked all winter and a streetlight outside the bedroom window.
Daniel continued.
“You would sit straight up.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“Don’t tell me what I did.”
“What?”
“Tell me what I said.”
Daniel looked hurt, then annoyed at being hurt.
“You said, ‘Where did she go?’”
Mara opened her eyes.
“That was it?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“The second time was different.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Different how?”
Daniel’s eyes stayed on Mara.
“You said, ‘Where did you put her?’”
Mara’s fingers curled against the table.
Not find her.
Put her.
An accusation.
She turned back to the password prompt.
“What did Mara ask for twice?”
Evan said, “Her.”
“No.”
“What?”
“The question says what.”
Mara touched the keyboard.
“Not who.”
Patel said, “Don’t guess repeatedly if the file could lock.”
Mara withdrew her hands.
Rebecca nodded.
“She’s right.”
Evan laughed bitterly.
“Excellent.”
He paced once across the kitchen and back.
“My brother builds a hostage escape room and now we’re worried about password attempts.”
“Caleb built this for a reason,” Mara said.
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
She looked at the frozen video.
“But whoever hit him didn’t want his face hidden.”
Evan stopped pacing.
Mara continued.
“If they forced him to record this, why tell me Lucy isn’t mine?”
“To make you trust the next thing.”
May you like
Rebecca’s answer came too quickly.
Mara looked at her.
