Chương 4
“How much?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Ten thousand.”
Claire almost smiled.
Not because it was funny.
Because ten thousand dollars was such an ordinary number.
Her father could spend it on wine at dinner.
Marcus had sold nine years of her life for the price of a used Honda.
“You took it.”
“My daughter needed surgery.”
Claire looked at him.
There it was.
The reason.
She hated him slightly less for having one.
That made her hate herself.
“What surgery?”
“Heart defect.”
“Did it save her?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Marcus winced.
Claire opened the rideshare door for Ethan.
Then she looked back.
“Do you remember who went into 317?”
Marcus nodded.
“Your mother.”
“Who else?”
A pause.
“Daniel.”
Claire waited.
Marcus rubbed his knuckle.
“And your father.”
“Anyone else?”
“I saw one more man earlier that evening. I didn’t know him.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I can do better.”
Claire froze.
Marcus looked ashamed.
“I kept one still image.”
“Why?”
“Because ten thousand dollars buys obedience. It doesn’t buy sleep.”
He glanced toward the hotel.
“I’ll find it.”
Claire said, “Before my father does.”
Marcus met her eyes.
“Yes.”
At Claire’s apartment, Ethan slept in her bed with the lights on.
Claire sat on the floor outside the bedroom door until four-thirty.
She could not make herself sleep.
She could not make herself call Richard.
Her phone showed seventeen missed calls from him.
Four from the family attorney.
Two from a number she did not recognize.
One text from Richard.
Please do not let Daniel turn your fear into something worse.
Claire read it five times.
Then she set the phone facedown.
At five-ten Ethan called from the bedroom.
“Claire?”
She went in.
He was sitting against the headboard, hair sticking up.
“You awake?”
“Yes.”
“That’s stupid.”
“What?”
“You were supposed to sleep.”
“So were you.”
“I did.”
“For forty minutes.”
“That counts.”
She sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
The old radiator knocked twice.
A garbage truck groaned somewhere in the alley.
Ethan looked at her.
“You really thought Mom died?”
Claire turned.
“What?”
“You thought she died?”
“Yes.”
“I thought maybe you knew.”
The sentence hurt in a place Claire had not prepared to defend.
“Why would I know?”
“Because you’re old.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“That’s old to me.”
“Thank you.”
He picked at the edge of the blanket.
“Dad says you know more stuff because you remember her.”
Claire did not answer.
Ethan had been eleven months old when Laura disappeared.
His memories of her were borrowed.
Photographs.
Stories.
A video of her feeding him mashed peas while he sneezed them across a kitchen table.
Claire had spent years deciding which stories to tell.
The funny ones.
Never the one about finding her mother asleep in the laundry room at three in the afternoon with a glass of wine beside the dryer.
Never the one about Richard breaking a cabinet door after an argument.
Never the winter when Laura stayed in the guest room for six weeks.
Children made archives without realizing it.
Then one day someone asked what happened, and the boxes opened.
“Do you remember Room 317?” Ethan asked.
“No.”
“Do you remember Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
Claire thought about that.
“Always around.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She looked at him.
He was annoyingly good at that.
“He was... polite. He brought Dad folders. He knew everybody’s birthday. He never ate dessert.”
“That’s weird.”
“It is.”
“Was he mean?”
“No.”
“Is he mean now?”
Claire stared at the wall.
“He locked you in a car.”
“So yes.”
“Yes.”
Ethan nodded as if grateful for the simplicity.
Then he opened his hand.
The key lay against his palm.
“Should we try it?”
Claire looked at 317.
She heard Daniel’s voice.
The room your father paid everyone to forget.
“We should give it to the police.”
“Dad wants it.”
“That’s a good reason not to give it to Dad.”
“What if Daniel wants it too?”
Claire looked toward the dark window.
“That’s also possible.”
Ethan leaned against her shoulder.
“Adults are really bad at making things less confusing.”
Claire rested her cheek on his hair.
“Correct.”
At nine in the morning, Marcus called.
He had found the still image.
He would not send it electronically.
“Why?”
“Because your father’s IT people have access to the hotel system and my company phone.”
“You think he monitors you?”
“I think he pays people who know how.”
“Where are you?”
A pause.
“Not at work anymore.”
Claire sat up.
“What happened?”
“They suspended me pending investigation.”
“For the luggage cart?”
“For talking to police without counsel present.”
“That’s legal?”
“It’s private employment. They can suspend me for blinking wrong if the handbook gives them enough language.”
“Where can we meet?”
Marcus suggested a twenty-four-hour diner six blocks south.
Ethan objected until Claire promised pancakes.
They walked.
The rain had stopped, leaving the city washed and metallic. Delivery trucks blocked half the curb lanes. Office workers moved around them with coffees and headphones, living inside a morning that seemed obscene in its normality.
At the diner, Marcus was already in a booth.
He wore jeans and a faded Northwestern sweatshirt Claire had never seen.
Without the security uniform, he looked smaller.
He had ordered coffee.
Ethan slid into the booth and immediately opened the laminated menu.
“I want chocolate chip.”
Claire said, “You always want plain.”
“I got kidnapped.”
Marcus choked on his coffee.
Claire stared at Ethan.
Ethan shrugged.
“I’m using it.”
For half a second, Claire laughed.
It escaped her before guilt shut it down.
Ethan smiled.
Marcus looked at his coffee.
“Good,” he said softly.
“What?”
“That he can still be funny.”
Claire reached across the table.
“What did you bring?”
Marcus removed a white envelope from inside the sweatshirt.
He pushed it toward her.
Inside was a glossy print of a grainy surveillance frame.
May you like
The hallway was familiar in an unsettling way. Floral carpet. Brass room numbers. Cream wallpaper.
Laura Hale stood near the door to Room 317.
