Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Photograph
Adrian stared at the photograph until his hands began to shake.
Jordan and Justin sat in the back seat of a black sedan.
And between them was Claire.
His dead wife.
“No.”
Evelyn stepped closer.
“What is it?”
Adrian turned the screen toward her.
Evelyn stopped breathing.
The photograph was dark and grainy, taken through the open passenger-side door of a vehicle. Jordan was pressed against the left window. Justin sat on the right.
Both boys looked frightened.
Neither appeared injured.
Between them sat a woman wearing a gray coat.
Her face was turned directly toward the camera.
Claire’s face.
The same brown eyes.
The same narrow nose.
The same small scar beneath her lower lip from a bicycle accident when she was thirteen.
Even the way she tilted her head was familiar.
Evelyn whispered, “That's your wife?”
Adrian couldn't answer.
Mrs. Bell approached from behind them.
The instant she saw the screen, her knees buckled.
She caught the banister.
“Oh, God.”
Adrian turned.
“You recognize her.”
Mrs. Bell said nothing.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Is that Claire?”
“I don't know.”
“You worked for her for eleven years.”
“I know what Claire looked like.”
“Then answer me.”
Mrs. Bell's lips trembled.
“It looks like her.”
Adrian grabbed his car keys from the table.
Evelyn blocked him.
“Where are you going?”
“To find my sons.”
“Where?”
He stopped.
The question was unbearable because he had no answer.
His phone vibrated again.
A message appeared.
NO POLICE.
A second followed.
BRING THE BLUE BOX.
Then a location pin.
Evelyn looked over his shoulder.
“Where is that?”
Adrian opened the map.
His stomach tightened.
“St. Catherine's.”
Evelyn stepped back.
Claire's warning returned instantly.
Whatever happens, do not let anyone take the boys to St. Catherine's.
“No,” Evelyn said.
Adrian was already moving.
“Get the box.”
“You can't go.”
“My children are there.”
“Your wife specifically told you not to take them there.”
“I didn't take them.”
“That doesn't make it safer.”
Adrian stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“You think I'm staying here?”
“No. I think whoever arranged this expects you to react without thinking.”
“They have my sons.”
“I know.”
“Then get out of my way.”
Evelyn didn't move.
For someone who worked in his house and had spent most of their acquaintance lowering her eyes when he entered a room, she suddenly seemed remarkably difficult to intimidate.
“Five minutes,” she said.
“What?”
“Give me five minutes.”
“For what?”
“To understand why St. Catherine's matters.”
“We don't have five minutes.”
“You don't know what you're walking into.”
“I know Jordan and Justin are there.”
“You know someone sent you a photograph.”
Adrian stared at her.
She continued.
“You don't know when it was taken. You don't know whether they're actually at that location. You don't know whether that woman is Claire.”
Mrs. Bell made a strange sound.
Both turned.
She had gone pale.
“What?” Adrian demanded.
Mrs. Bell looked toward the floor.
“St. Catherine's isn't a church.”
“I know that,” Adrian said.
The name belonged to a private children's medical center that had closed years earlier.
He remembered seeing it from the highway.
A brick complex beyond an iron fence.
“What was it?” Evelyn asked.
Mrs. Bell hesitated.
“A maternity hospital.”
Adrian looked at her.
“What?”
“Before it became a children's clinic.”
“How do you know?”
“Claire told me.”
“When?”
Mrs. Bell closed her eyes.
“After the twins were born.”
Adrian's patience snapped.
He crossed the foyer in three steps.
“What did my wife tell you?”
Mrs. Bell flinched.
“That she had been there.”
“When?”
“Before she met you.”
Adrian stared at her.
Claire had told him everything.
At least, he had believed she had.
They had met at a charity dinner seven years earlier.
She had been twenty-eight.
He had been thirty-one.
She had teased him for checking his email during dessert.
He had asked for her number.
She had refused.
He had spent three months convincing her to have dinner with him.
There had been no mysterious hospital.
No Rachel Hart.
No blue box.
No St. Catherine's.
“What happened there?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying again.”
“I swear.”
Adrian pointed upstairs.
“You kept a key around your neck for fourteen months.”
“Because Claire asked me to.”
“You hid a box.”
“Yes.”
“You knew the phrase ‘blue is for secrets.’”
Mrs. Bell's face crumpled.
“Yes.”
“Then stop protecting a dead woman from her husband and help me save her children.”
The words hung between them.
Mrs. Bell looked toward the staircase.
Finally, she whispered, “Claire wasn't afraid for herself.”
Adrian waited.
“She was afraid someone would come for the boys.”
Evelyn's eyes widened.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Bell shook her head.
“She never told me.”
Adrian laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Apparently nobody in this house knows anything.”
He started upstairs.
Evelyn followed.
They returned to Claire's bedroom.
The blue box remained open on the nightstand.
The old phone was dark.
Adrian grabbed it.
Evelyn took Claire's letter.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading it again.”
“We don't have time.”
“Exactly.”
She scanned the page.
Then stopped.
“Adrian.”
He turned.
She pointed.
“‘Mrs. Bell knows where I hid the first key.’”
“I read it.”
“First key.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
Adrian frowned.
Mrs. Bell entered behind them.
“The drawer key.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
Mrs. Bell stared at her.
“The drawer key opened the blue box.”
“No, it opened the drawer.”
Adrian understood.
“Claire said first key.”
Evelyn nodded.
“She meant another key.”
All three looked at the box.
Adrian removed the phone.
Then the envelope.
The interior was lined with dark blue velvet.
Nothing else.
Evelyn ran her fingers around the edges.
“There's something underneath.”
Adrian lifted the velvet lining.
A brass key lay beneath it.
Beside the key was a photograph.
Not Claire.
Not Adrian.
A younger woman stood outside a brick building holding a baby.
Evelyn grabbed it.
Her face went white.
“Rachel.”
Adrian looked at the photograph.
The woman was perhaps twenty-five.
Dark hair.
Slim face.
She was smiling nervously at the camera.
Behind her was a stone sign.
ST. CATHERINE'S MATERNITY CENTER.
“What baby is she holding?”
Evelyn turned the photograph over.
Writing covered the back.
May 14.
He came early.
C says he's safer with me until everything is settled.
No names.
Adrian read it twice.
“May fourteenth.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“What?”
“Jordan and Justin were born May fourteenth.”
Mrs. Bell sat down.
“No.”
Adrian's heart began pounding.
“The photograph is six years old.”
Evelyn examined the date.
“Your twins are five.”
“They turn six next month.”
Silence.
Evelyn looked at the baby again.
“No.”
Adrian took the picture.
Claire and Adrian had been told the twins were born six weeks premature.
Claire had gone into labor while Adrian was in Chicago.
By the time his plane landed, both babies were already in neonatal care.
He had arrived at the hospital at 2:13 in the morning.
He remembered the incubators.
The tiny hands.
Claire crying when he walked into her room.
He remembered asking why nobody had called sooner.
Claire had blamed panic.
Adrian had never questioned it.
Until now.
“That's not one of my sons.”
He said it as though saying it could make it true.
Evelyn looked at him.
“You can't know that.”
“They were twins.”
“This photograph shows one baby. It doesn't say there wasn't another.”
Adrian looked toward Mrs. Bell.
She shook her head desperately.
“I didn't know.”
“Did Claire ever mention Rachel?”
“No.”
“Think.”
“I would remember.”
Adrian grabbed the brass key.
“What does this open?”
Mrs. Bell stared.
“I've never seen it.”
The old phone suddenly chimed.
A text.
Adrian picked it up.
One sentence.
YOU HAVE 34 MINUTES.
Then another.
COME ALONE.
A third.
OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.
Adrian moved.
Evelyn followed.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You need me.”
“I need my sons.”
“The phone called using my name. My sister is connected to this. Claire named me in her letter.”
“Exactly why you're staying here.”
“You think I did this?”
“I don't know what to think.”
Evelyn stopped him at the stairs.
“If that woman really is Claire, will you be able to think clearly when you see her?”
Adrian stared at her.
“Don't.”
“I'm serious.”
“My wife is dead.”
“Then whoever is wearing her face knows exactly what it will do to you.”
That stopped him.
Evelyn continued.
“You need someone there who isn't emotionally connected to Claire.”
Adrian gave her a cold look.
“Your dead sister is apparently involved.”
“Then maybe neither of us is thinking clearly.”
Mrs. Bell appeared behind them.
“I'll come.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“No.”
“I knew Claire.”
“Which is exactly why you won't.”
He opened a cabinet beneath the hall table.
Inside was a small biometric safe.
Evelyn watched him unlock it.
He removed a compact flashlight, a second phone and his car keys.
No weapons.
No police.
Not yet.
He photographed every document.
Claire's letter.
Rachel's photograph.
The note from the nursery.
Then he sent copies to his attorney with one instruction:
If I don't call by midnight, give these to Detective Warren.
Evelyn noticed.
“Who's Warren?”
“A homicide detective.”
“You know a homicide detective?”
“He investigated Claire's accident.”
Mrs. Bell made a tiny movement.
Adrian saw it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Mrs. Bell.”
She shook her head.
Adrian walked toward her.
“What about Detective Warren?”
“I only met him once.”
“When?”
“After Claire died.”
“Why?”
“He came here.”
Adrian frowned.
“No detective came here.”
“You were at the hospital dealing with paperwork.”
“What did he want?”
Mrs. Bell looked terrified.
“He wanted Claire's laptop.”
Adrian's blood went cold.
“What laptop?”
“The silver one.”
Claire had owned a silver laptop.
Adrian remembered it perfectly.
It had disappeared after the accident.
Police said it wasn't recovered from the vehicle.
“You gave it to him?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did he come?”
“He said Claire had called him the night before she died.”
Adrian couldn't speak.
Detective Warren had personally told Adrian there had been no indication Claire expected danger.
An accident.
That was his conclusion.
Wet road.
Distracted truck driver.
Nothing suspicious.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Claire had made me promise.”
Adrian's voice became dangerously quiet.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
Mrs. Bell started crying.
“She told me if anything happened to her, I was to protect the boys and say nothing until the blue box was opened.”
“The box is open.”
“Yes.”
“Then talk.”
“She said there were two people you must never trust.”
“Names.”
“She only gave me one.”
“Who?”
Mrs. Bell looked at his phone.
Adrian understood before she spoke.
“Detective Warren.”
His attorney had just received copies of everything with instructions to contact Warren.
Adrian grabbed the phone.
He called.
Voicemail.
He called again.
Nothing.
Then a message appeared from his attorney.
Already sent everything to Warren. He's heading to you now.
Adrian swore.
“We leave.”
Evelyn didn't argue this time.
They hurried downstairs.
Adrian opened the front door.
A black SUV waited outside.
Not his.
The headlights were off.
The driver's door opened.
Adrian pushed Evelyn behind him.
A man stepped out.
Detective Warren.
Gray hair.
Broad shoulders.
Same calm expression Adrian remembered from the worst night of his life.
“Adrian.”
“Don't come closer.”
Warren stopped.
“I got the files.”
“I know.”
“You need to listen to me.”
“Where are my sons?”
Warren's face changed.
“What happened?”
“Don't.”
“I don't know where your children are.”
“Claire warned me about you.”
Warren stared at him.
Then his eyes moved to Evelyn.
Everything changed.
“Rachel?”
Evelyn stiffened.
“My name is Evelyn.”
Warren looked as though he had seen a ghost.
Adrian stepped between them.
“You knew her sister.”
Warren didn't answer.
“You investigated Rachel Hart's death.”
Still nothing.
Adrian understood.
“Didn't you?”
Warren looked toward the house.
“We can't talk here.”
“We're not talking anywhere.”
“Adrian, if you have the blue box, they're already watching.”
“Who?”
Warren stepped closer.
“The people Claire spent six years hiding from.”
A car engine roared somewhere beyond the gate.
Warren turned sharply.
“Get inside.”
Adrian didn't move.
“Now!”
Headlights appeared at the end of the driveway.
The vehicle accelerated toward them.
Warren reached beneath his jacket.
Evelyn screamed.
The approaching car swerved.
Then Adrian's old phone rang.
He looked down.
CLAIRE COLE.
His dead wife's name filled the screen.
The black car stopped twenty feet away.
Its rear door opened.
A woman's shoe touched the pavement.
May you like
Then Adrian heard Claire's voice from inside the car.
“Bring me my sons.”
