Chương 8
He almost closed the door again.
For a second, he thought he had opened the wrong apartment, walked into the wrong hallway, stepped into someone else's life by mistake.
Then the woman holding the phone looked up.
"Are you Daniel Mercer?"
Her voice was not angry.
That somehow made it worse.
Daniel kept one hand on the edge of the door.
"Depends who's asking."
The woman lowered the phone slightly but did not put it away.
"My name is Claire Bell."
The name meant nothing to him.
The expression on her face did.
It was the look people wore when they had already decided something about you but were waiting for the right moment to say it out loud.
Behind her, two neighbors stood near the elevator pretending not to listen.
Daniel hated that more than he expected.
Not the accusation.
Not yet.
The audience.
"What happened?" he asked.
Claire looked at the screen again.
"You tell me."
Daniel's eyes moved to the phone.
A photograph filled the display.
It was grainy and badly lit, but there was no mistake.
It was him.
Standing outside the downtown office building where he worked.
The timestamp in the corner showed 11:42 p.m. three nights earlier.
His stomach tightened.
He had been there.
He remembered the empty lobby, the broken vending machine near the security desk, the way his coffee had gone cold while he sat alone at his desk.
What he did not remember was anyone taking a picture.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
Claire's fingers tightened around the phone.
"From my sister."
Daniel looked at her face.
Something changed there.
Not anger.
Pain.
"Your sister?"
"Emma Bell."
The name landed harder than he expected.
Not because he knew her.
Because he knew the name from somewhere else.
A news article.
A company email.
A conversation people stopped having when he walked into the room.
Daniel stepped back.
"She worked at Mercer Financial."
Claire gave a small humorless laugh.
"Yeah."
The hallway suddenly felt too narrow.
Daniel had spent the last three weeks telling himself that silence was temporary.
That people would eventually move on.
That a bad story could only survive if someone kept feeding it.
He had been wrong.
The story had found a new person.
"What does your sister think I did?" he asked.
Claire stared at him.
"You don't know?"
Daniel wanted to say no immediately.
The answer was already in his throat.
But something about her face stopped him.
A person who truly did not know would look confused.
A person who knew and was lying would look away.
Daniel did neither.
He just looked tired.
"I know what people have been saying," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
The elevator doors opened behind them.
The neighbors stepped inside quickly, suddenly interested in leaving.
Claire waited until they were gone.
Then she lowered her voice.
"My sister disappeared after that night."
The sentence changed the air between them.
Daniel looked past her toward the empty hallway.
"What?"
"She hasn't answered her phone. She hasn't gone home. Her car was found two blocks from your building."
"I don't know anything about that."
Claire watched him carefully.
"Everyone says you were the last person seen near her."
Daniel felt a familiar pressure behind his eyes.
The same pressure he had felt when his manager told him not to come into work.
The same pressure when his friends stopped returning messages.
The same pressure when strangers online decided they knew him better than people who had known him for years.
Except this time there was something different.
This time there was fear underneath the anger.
"I wasn't the last person with Emma," he said.
Claire frowned.
"What?"
Daniel looked at the picture again.
The photo showed him outside the building.
It did not show what happened inside.
"I saw her that night."
Claire went completely still.
"You just said you didn't know anything."
"I said I didn't know where she was."
"That's not the same thing."
"No."
He rubbed his forehead.
It was a habit his sister used to make fun of when they were kids.
Whenever he was nervous, his hand went to the same spot above his eyebrow.
"You need to leave," he said.
Claire looked almost offended.
"Excuse me?"
"Not because I don't believe you."
"That is exactly what it sounds like."
"I mean you need to leave because standing in my hallway with a phone and a missing person accusation is not going to help either of us."
She stared at him.
Then she looked away.
For the first time, Daniel saw how exhausted she was.
Her coat was wrinkled.
Her hair looked like she had been running her hands through it all day.
There was a paper cup sitting beside her foot.
Probably coffee she forgot to drink.
"You know what everyone keeps telling me?" Claire said quietly.
Daniel said nothing.
"They keep telling me to wait."
The hallway lights buzzed above them.
"Police are looking into it. Lawyers are reviewing things. The company is cooperating. Everyone has a process."
Her mouth tightened.
"Processes are great when you lose a password."
Daniel looked down.
Claire swallowed.
"They are less comforting when your sister is gone."
He had no answer for that.
The cruel thing about grief was that it did not care who deserved sympathy.
Sometimes it arrived at the wrong person's door.
"I talked to Emma at 10:15 that night," Daniel said.
Claire looked up.
"About what?"
"Work."
"Why?"
"Because she asked."
"About what?"
Daniel hesitated.
There was a reason he had not told anyone.
Not the police.
Not his former boss.
Not even his closest friend.
Because once he said it out loud, it became real.
"She found something."
Claire's expression changed.
"What kind of something?"
Daniel looked inside his apartment.
The place suddenly felt unfamiliar.
His laptop sat open on the kitchen counter.
May you like
A pile of unopened mail leaned against the wall.
A half-finished book rested face down on the couch.
