Chapter 2 - The Photograph in Her Locker
Emma stared at the photograph for so long that I wondered if she had forgotten the rest of us were there.
“My father is dead,” she whispered.
“You just told me you didn’t know.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“No,” I said. “That’s what you wanted to believe.”
Marcus pulled the curtains closed.
Mrs. Caldwell stood near the door, one hand pressed against her chest.
I looked at Emma.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Her eyes flashed.
Under different circumstances, I might have admired the defiance.
She sat on the edge of the chair near the bed.
I handed Marcus my phone.
“Trace it.”
He frowned.
“You know how these people work.”
“Try.”
He left.
Mrs. Caldwell followed after I told her to lock down the east wing.
Emma and I were alone.
“You came here looking for him,” I said.
She did not answer.
I waited.
People mistake silence for patience.
It is not.
Silence is pressure.
Eventually, most people fill it.
Emma did.
“I came because I found your name in my father’s things.”
“How long ago?”
“Three months.”
“What things?”
“A storage unit.”
“Where?”
“Cicero.”
“Why did you wait?”
“I didn’t know what any of it meant.”
“What did you find?”
She looked toward the door.
“No one’s coming in.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
She looked at me.
“You.”
Fair.
I rolled backward slightly.
“Tell me.”
Emma rubbed her palms against her apron.
“My father vanished when I was twenty-five. No goodbye. No explanation. His apartment was empty. His phone was disconnected. Police treated him like another adult who decided to disappear.”
“Did you tell them his real name?”
“I didn’t know it.”
That hurt more than it should have.
“Daniel Hayes was the only name I ever knew.”
“And the storage unit?”
“The bill kept arriving.”
“To where?”
“My apartment. He used my address.”
“You opened it three months ago?”
“Yes.”
“What was inside?”
“Clothes. Cash. Old phones. A handgun.”
I said nothing.
“And photographs,” she continued.
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Dozens.”
“Anything else?”
She swallowed.
“A newspaper clipping about your shooting.”
There it was.
“And?”
“Your medical records.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“What records?”
“Hospital intake. Surgical notes. Rehabilitation reports.”
Those records had never become public.
Only my doctors, attorneys, and inner circle had access.
“Where are they now?”
“I burned them.”
I stared at her.
“You burned them?”
“I was scared.”
“You destroyed evidence.”
“I didn’t know it was evidence.”
“You found private medical files belonging to a man with my reputation and thought fire was a reasonable filing system?”
She glared.
“You’re proving my point.”
I almost laughed again.
It annoyed me that she could still do that.
“Why come here?”
“Because there was a photograph.”
“Of?”
“You and my father.”
I knew the photograph before she described it.
A fishing trip in Wisconsin.
Daniel and me standing beside a lake, both twenty-seven, both stupid enough to believe age would never catch us.
“He wrote something on the back,” Emma said.
“What?”
“‘If anything happens, Vincent will know why.’”
My stomach tightened.
Daniel had left me a message.
And for two years, it had been sitting in a storage locker.
“Why didn’t you bring it?”
“I did.”
“Where is it?”
“In my locker downstairs.”
I reached for the call button.
Emma stood.
“I can get it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody took your picture outside my gates this morning.”
“I’m already inside.”
“Exactly.”
She crossed her arms.
“You think there’s someone here.”
“I think there’s always someone somewhere.”
“You really live like this?”
I looked at my legs.
“Not by choice.”
Her expression softened.
I hated that more than fear.
“Don’t,” I said.
“What?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t.”
“Good.”
“I think you’re exhausting.”
I stared.
She turned away before I could respond.
Marcus returned twenty minutes later.
“No trace.”
“Of course.”
“But there’s more.”
He held a tablet.
“Security camera at the south service entrance went offline for ninety seconds at 6:14 this morning.”
“When did Emma arrive?”
“6:16.”
Emma looked up.
Marcus continued.
“And her locker was opened at 7:03.”
Emma stood.
“What?”
“No camera in the locker room, but the electronic access log recorded an override.”
“Who has override authority?”
“Me. Mrs. Caldwell. You.”
“I didn’t open it.”
“Neither did I.”
Mrs. Caldwell appeared behind him.
“Nor did I.”
Emma went pale.
“The photograph.”
“Still there?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Marcus looked at me.
“We should move her.”
“No.”
Emma turned toward me.
“No?”
“If whoever sent that message wants us afraid, moving you immediately tells them it worked.”
“So I stay here?”
“Yes.”
“I have work.”
“You’re not cleaning anything.”
“Then I don’t get paid.”
Despite everything, Marcus smiled.
Emma noticed.
“Don’t encourage him.”
I said, “Double rate.”
She blinked.
“For sitting here?”
“For not getting killed.”
“That’s not in my contract.”
“It is now.”
By late afternoon, I had the photograph from Emma’s locker in my hand.
Marcus had retrieved it himself.
Daniel and I stood beside the lake.
Younger.
Unbroken.
On the back, Daniel’s handwriting looked exactly as I remembered.
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS, VINCENT WILL KNOW WHY.
Beneath that was another line.
One Emma had not mentioned.
TRUST THE GIRL.
I looked up.
“You didn’t see this?”
Emma took the picture.
Her face changed.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
The ink was darker.
Newer.
Someone had added it.
Marcus noticed too.
“That wasn’t written years ago.”
“No.”
Emma’s fingers trembled.
“So somebody had this today.”
“Somebody inside the house.”
Mrs. Caldwell sat down.
I had never seen her sit during a crisis.
That worried me.
The estate employed thirty-seven people.
Housekeeping.
Kitchen staff.
Security.
Drivers.
Maintenance.
Medical personnel.
Any one of them could have entered the locker room.
Any one of them might have known Daniel.
Any one of them could have helped put me in this chair.
I looked at Marcus.
“Lock the estate.”
“Vincent—”
“No one leaves.”
Emma shook her head.
“You can’t hold thirty-seven people hostage.”
“I can hold thirty-seven employees while security checks an internal breach.”
“Same thing with better lawyers.”
Mrs. Caldwell covered a cough that might have been laughter.
Marcus did not bother hiding his.
I pointed toward the door.
“Both of you, out.”
They left.
Emma remained.
I rolled toward the window, then remembered the curtains were closed.
The room felt smaller.
“You think my father betrayed you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He was responsible for security the night I was shot.”
“That doesn’t mean he pulled the trigger.”
“No.”
“But you believed he helped.”
“He disappeared three days later.”
“Maybe because he was afraid.”
“Daniel Cross was afraid of almost nothing.”
“People said that about you too.”
I turned sharply.
Emma did not retreat.
“You think this chair made me afraid?”
“I think almost dying changes people.”
Her voice was quiet.
No pity.
Just truth.
I looked away.
The bullet had taken motion from my legs.
But the fear came later.
Fear of bathrooms.
Fear of stairs.
Fear of being lifted.
Fear of falling.
Fear of waking after another surgery and hearing another doctor say, “We need to adjust expectations.”
I had hidden it behind anger because anger was easier for other people to understand.
Emma walked toward the bed.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You usually do anyway.”
“If my father had wanted you dead, why keep your medical records?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why keep photographs of you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why leave a note saying you would know why?”
“I don’t know.”
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Maybe he wasn’t running from you.”
I looked at her.
“Maybe he was running from whoever shot you.”
The thought had occurred to me.
Many times.
I had killed it each time because the alternative hurt more.
If Daniel had betrayed me, anger was simple.
If Daniel had tried to protect me and disappeared because I failed to understand the warning, then I had spent two years hating the wrong man.
A knock came.
Marcus entered.
His face had changed.
“What?”
“We searched the staff lockers.”
“And?”
“Found a burner phone.”
“Whose?”
He looked at Emma.
“Yours.”
Her face went blank.
“That’s impossible.”
Marcus held up a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a cheap black phone.
“It was underneath your spare uniform.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“We turned it on.”
My pulse slowed.
That was always what happened before bad news.
“What’s on it?”
Marcus met my eyes.
“Photographs of the ballroom.”
Emma stood.
“No.”
“Taken from outside the estate.”
“No.”
“And messages.”
I held out my hand.
Marcus gave me the phone.
The first thread contained only four lines.
UNKNOWN: IS HE STILL IN THE WHEELCHAIR?
EMMA: YES.
UNKNOWN: DOES HE SUSPECT YOU?
EMMA: NOT YET.
I looked at her.
Her lips parted.
“That isn’t mine.”
“Your name is saved as Emma.”
“Anyone could type that.”
“Then explain this.”
Marcus took the phone back and opened the photo gallery.
A picture appeared.
Emma asleep.
Taken from only a few feet away.
Inside her apartment.
She stared at it.
The color drained completely from her face.
“That was taken last night.”
I looked at Marcus.
“Someone was in her home.”
Emma backed toward the bed.
Another message arrived on the burner phone.
All three of us heard the vibration.
Marcus opened it.
His expression hardened.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
One sentence.
CHECK THE BASEMENT BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
I looked toward the bedroom door.
At that exact moment, the lights went out.
May you like
A heavy crash echoed from downstairs.
Then Mrs. Caldwell screamed.
