Chương 3
Thomas rubbed his forehead.
"I don't know."
I studied him.
The answer felt real.
That scared me more than a lie would have.
"You expect me to believe that?"
"No."
He looked at me with exhausted honesty.
"I expect you to believe whatever helps you survive the next few hours."
Before I could respond, headlights swept across the windows.
A car stopped outside.
Thomas moved instantly.
The tired man disappeared.
What remained was someone alert.
Someone afraid.
"Who is that?"
"You need to leave."
"No."
"Claire."
He said my name differently than Reyes had.
Not as a warning.
As recognition.
"I know what you think this is."
"What do I think?"
"You think you found the place where someone took your sister."
I stayed silent.
"You're wrong."
The front door opened downstairs.
A voice called from the hallway.
"Thomas?"
The sound made him close his eyes for a second.
Not panic.
Regret.
"Who is that?"
He walked toward a bookshelf and pressed his hand against the wood panel beside it.
A hidden mechanism clicked.
Part of the shelf moved inward.
I stared.
"Seriously?"
He gave me a brief look.
"Now is not the time."
The hidden opening revealed a narrow passage.
The existence of the passage should have shocked me.
Instead, it felt like one more impossible thing added to an already impossible night.
"You knew about this?"
"Everyone in this family knew about something."
"That doesn't answer anything."
"No."
He looked toward the hallway.
"It doesn't."
The footsteps outside the study grew louder.
Thomas grabbed my arm.
Not violently.
Urgently.
"Listen carefully."
I pulled away.
"Don't touch me."
He released me immediately.
That small reaction confused me.
A man hiding secrets in an abandoned mansion should not have seemed concerned about boundaries.
"Your sister came here because she believed the Ashfords destroyed evidence about someone who died."
"Who?"
Thomas hesitated.
That hesitation was the first thing he did that felt like confirmation.
"Her name was Lydia Vale."
I searched my memory.
The name meant nothing.
"It should have been forgotten," he said.
"But Mara didn't forget it."
The footsteps stopped outside the door.
Thomas looked at the opening in the bookshelf.
"Go."
I didn't move.
"Tell me who Lydia was."
His face changed.
For the first time, I saw something beneath the secrets.
Guilt.
"She was the reason Mara came here."
The doorknob turned.
Thomas pushed me toward the hidden passage.
"Claire, if they find you here, you won't get the chance to ask another question."
I stepped into the darkness.
The bookshelf closed behind me just as the study door opened.
I could hear a woman's voice from the other side.
"Where is she?"
Thomas answered quietly.
"Who?"
The woman laughed.
Not happily.
Like she had heard the same lie too many times.
"Don't do that, Thomas."
I pressed my hand against the wall of the narrow passage.
My breathing sounded too loud.
Then I heard the woman say the words that made my entire body go cold.
"Claire Bennett has Mara's letter."
The passage seemed to shrink around me.
She knew my name.
And she had been waiting for me to find it.
The passage behind me went completely silent.
I kept one hand against the cold stone wall and waited for someone to speak.
No one did.
That frightened me more than the voices.
People who are angry make noise.
People who are afraid usually do too.
Silence meant someone was thinking.
Someone was deciding what happened next.
The narrow passage smelled like damp wood and old paper.
I moved deeper into the darkness, careful not to touch anything I couldn't see.
The walls were close enough that my shoulders brushed against them when I walked.
Whoever built this hidden corridor had not made it for comfort.
It was built for leaving.
Or hiding.
My phone was still in my pocket.
I considered calling Reyes.
Then I remembered his reaction when he realized I was inside the mansion.
He had followed me here.
He knew something.
Maybe more than Thomas.
Maybe less.
Either way, calling him meant admitting I was no longer in control.
I hated how familiar that feeling was.
Mara had always been better at accepting uncertainty than I was.
She could walk into a room full of people who hated her and ask questions anyway.
I needed proof before I moved.
She needed a reason.
The difference used to annoy me.
Now it felt like a warning I had ignored.
A faint line of light appeared ahead.
The passage ended at another door.
I pressed my ear against it.
Nothing.
I opened it slowly.
The room beyond was small and unfinished.
A basement office hidden beneath the mansion.
There was a desk.
A filing cabinet.
A broken lamp.
And a wall covered with photographs.
I stopped breathing for a second.
The photographs were not of the Ashford family.
They were of people.
Neighbors.
Employees.
Town officials.
People I recognized from newspaper articles and community events.
People connected to Ashford Industries.
At the center of the wall was a photograph of Mara.
Not old.
Not from before she disappeared.
Recent.
Taken inside the mansion.
She was standing near the same staircase I had walked up earlier.
She was looking at someone outside the frame.
The picture had been printed on regular paper.
No date.
No explanation.
Just her face.
I reached toward it and stopped.
Again.
The habit irritated me.
Mara had left fingerprints everywhere in my life.
I hated that even now, when she wasn't here to argue with me, I still followed her rules.
A folder sat on the desk.
My name was written on it.
Claire Bennett.
The handwriting was not Mara's.
I opened it.
Inside were newspaper clippings about me.
My college graduation.
My job at the local archive.
An article about my mother's retirement.
A photograph of me leaving my apartment.
I dropped the folder.
The pages scattered across the floor.
May you like
This was not someone investigating Mara.
This was someone investigating me.
