Chapter 3 - Five Years Inside a Coffin
The name was Evelyn Pendleton.
Arthur’s mother.
She had supposedly died twenty-two years earlier.
Arthur stared at the message until the letters blurred.
Kora saw the screen.
Her reaction was immediate.
She backed into the wall.
Arthur noticed.
“You know that name.”
Kora slowly nodded.
“How?”
Her hand shook as she wrote.
SHE WAS THERE.
Arthur felt something inside him go cold.
“Where?”
Kora touched her throat.
Arthur understood.
“Where they kept you?”
Another nod.
Wyatt muttered, “Arthur, your mother died when you were twelve.”
“I attended that funeral too.”
The words sounded different now.
Funerals had become unreliable things.
Arthur crouched beside Kora.
“Tell me what happened after the car attack.”
She stared at the paper.
For nearly a minute she did nothing.
Then she began writing.
CAR HIT.
MEN CAME.
NOT YOUR MEN.
HOSPITAL.
INJECTION.
WOKE UNDERGROUND.
Arthur forced himself to keep breathing.
“Five years?”
Kora shook her head.
She wrote:
MOVED MANY TIMES.
“Who hurt your throat?”
Her pencil stopped.
Then:
ELIAS TRIED TO MAKE ME TALK.
“About what?”
Kora looked at Arthur.
ABOUT YOU.
Arthur frowned.
“What about me?”
She wrote three words.
YOUR FATHER’S LEDGER.
Arthur stood.
His father had been dead for fourteen years.
A ledger had disappeared the night he died.
Rumors said it contained records of payments connecting judges, police commissioners, shipping companies, and several crime families.
Arthur had always assumed the ledger was mythology.
Kora apparently had not.
“I never had it.”
Kora nodded.
I KNOW.
“Then why take you?”
She wrote:
THEY THOUGHT YOU TOLD ME.
Arthur looked at Wyatt.
Wyatt’s expression had hardened.
“My father was obsessed with that ledger.”
Arthur remembered.
Elias Miller had served Arthur’s father.
So had Silas.
So had Conrad Whitmore.
Three men.
Three survivors of an older generation.
Three men who had benefited from the deaths around Arthur.
Arthur looked toward the crypt door.
The footsteps outside had vanished.
“We leave through the burial tunnel.”
Wyatt nodded.
Kora caught Arthur’s hand.
She wrote:
NO HOUSE.
Arthur understood immediately.
“My house is compromised?”
YES.
“Who?”
DON’T KNOW.
Arthur looked at Wyatt.
“Take us to the old theater.”
The Pendleton family had owned the abandoned Bellamy Theater for decades. Almost nobody knew Arthur maintained rooms beneath it.
They escaped through a tunnel connecting the cathedral crypt to an alley two blocks away.
An armored car met them.
Arthur sat opposite Kora.
Neither spoke.
She kept staring at him.
Five years existed between them like another person.
Arthur wanted to touch her.
He didn't.
He had spent years imagining what he would say if miracles existed.
Now one sat six feet away and he had nothing.
Finally he whispered, “I buried you.”
Kora’s eyes filled.
“I talked to you every Sunday.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I told your grave things I couldn't tell anyone alive.”
Kora reached across the space.
Her fingers touched his hand.
Arthur turned his palm upward.
She placed hers inside it.
For ten seconds, the world became quiet.
Then the car stopped.
Bellamy Theater appeared beyond the window.
Wyatt checked the entrance.
Clear.
Inside, Arthur’s physician examined Kora.
The damage to her throat was old.
Possibly surgical.
Possibly deliberate.
She might regain some speech with treatment.
Arthur had to leave the room when he heard that.
He stood alone backstage beneath torn velvet curtains.
Beatrice found him there.
Arthur spun.
Two guards appeared behind her.
“She asked to come,” one explained.
Arthur dismissed them but kept the door open.
Beatrice still wore her wedding dress.
Without the veil, she looked strangely young.
“I didn't know they would try to kill her,” she said.
Arthur stared at her.
“But you knew she was alive.”
Beatrice nodded.
“For three weeks.”
“Why?”
“My father brought me to the shelter.”
Arthur said nothing.
“He wanted the veil repaired. He specifically requested Kora.”
“Why?”
“To test you.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed.
Beatrice began crying.
“My father wanted to know whether you would recognize anything connected to her.”
“The blood?”
“Wasn't planned. She pricked her finger.”
Arthur understood.
Conrad had deliberately put Kora’s hands on Beatrice’s veil.
A ghost delivered directly to Arthur’s altar.
“Why test me?”
“Because he needed to know whether you still loved her.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“And?”
Beatrice gave a broken laugh.
“We both know the answer.”
Arthur felt no triumph.
Only exhaustion.
“Why did your father care?”
Beatrice looked toward the room where Kora rested.
“Because the marriage wasn't the alliance.”
“What was it?”
“You.”
Arthur waited.
“My father believes the Pendleton ledger can only be opened by a Pendleton heir.”
Arthur almost dismissed it.
Then Beatrice continued.
“It isn't a book, Arthur.”
His attention sharpened.
“It’s a vault.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Who does?”
Beatrice looked terrified.
“Kora.”
Behind them came a crash.
Arthur turned.
The examination-room door stood open.
The doctor lay unconscious.
Kora was gone.
On the bed rested a folded piece of paper.
Arthur opened it.
Kora had written one sentence.
I HAD TO GO BEFORE HE FOUND YOU.
Arthur ran toward the rear exit.
It was already open.
May you like
Outside, a black car waited with its engine running.
And through the rear window, Arthur saw Kora sitting beside the man he had called Uncle Silas his entire life...
