Chapter 4 - A Voice From Seven Years Ago.
Nobody answered the video call at first.
Ethan's first instinct was to reach for the phone.
Claire caught his wrist.
He looked down at her hand as if the contact surprised him as much as it surprised her.
"If it is Daniel, he'll call again."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then grabbing an unknown device in a crime scene still isn't going to bring him back."
Ethan stared at the phone.
"You always did become irritatingly practical when everyone else panicked."
Claire released his wrist.
"You used to call it competent."
"I was trying to impress you."
The remark arrived so naturally that both of them went quiet afterward.
Seven years stood between one sentence and the next.
Detective Cole watched them without comment.
Claire suspected investigators learned to notice every silence people thought was private.
The phone rang again.
Daniel's name appeared.
Ethan inhaled slowly.
Claire saw his hand tighten at his side.
For all his controlled anger, Ethan had never been given a chance to grieve normally.
He had buried Daniel, learned the body was not Daniel's, been ordered by Arthur to remain silent, and then lived inside uncertainty for years.
Claire's own grief had been cleaner by comparison.
She had believed Daniel was dead.
Ethan had been forced to wonder.
"If it's really him," Claire said quietly, "don't spend the first thirty seconds yelling."
Ethan looked at her.
"That's your advice?"
"Yes."
"After what he did?"
"Especially after what he did."
Ethan almost smiled.
"You're planning to yell later?"
"Absolutely."
That earned the smallest real smile Claire had seen from him all night.
Then the call was answered and the smile disappeared.
When Daniel's voice said Claire's name, Ethan shut his eyes.
Claire did not.
She forced herself to listen for details beyond emotion.
Background noise.
Distance.
Breathing.
Anything that could prove where he was.
Daniel had once told her that panic narrowed a person's field of attention.
The irony was not lost on her now.
She heard wind behind him.
A gull.
Something metallic striking rhythmically against wood.
Harbor sounds.
She glanced at Cole and mouthed the word coast.
Cole nodded and texted the technician tracing the call.
Even before Daniel named North Haven later, Claire knew he was near water.
That tiny deduction gave her one fragile sense of control in a night built to take it away.
The prepaid phone vibrated against the metal vent while Daniel's name glowed across the screen.
Detective Cole ordered everyone away from the device.
An officer photographed it, then placed it on the desk inside a clear evidence sleeve with the camera still exposed.
The call stopped.
Three seconds later, it came again.
DANIEL.
Ethan looked at Claire.
"If that's him, somebody wants us to answer."
Cole's expression remained hard.
"Or somebody wants you to believe it's him."
The phone continued ringing.
Claire could hear her own heartbeat beneath the electronic tone.
Seven years of grief, guilt, anger, and unanswered questions seemed compressed into that tiny screen.
"Answer it."
Cole nodded to the officer.
He accepted the call and turned the speaker on.
The image remained black.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then a man's voice came through the phone.
"Claire?"
Claire gripped the edge of the desk.
She knew that voice.
Age had roughened it.
Fear had changed its rhythm.
But she knew it.
"Daniel?"
Ethan went completely still.
A long breath came through the speaker.
"You shouldn't have come back."
Claire almost laughed at the cruelty of hearing the same warning from both Daniel and Eleanor.
"Where are you?"
"I can't tell you."
"You let everyone think you were dead."
"I had no choice."
Ethan stepped closer.
"Daniel."
Silence.
Then the voice broke slightly.
"Ethan?"
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"I'm here."
"Then Dad failed."
"Dad is dead."
A longer silence followed.
"When?"
"Three years ago."
The voice on the phone changed.
Whatever performance or caution had been holding it together cracked for one moment.
"How?"
"Stroke."
Daniel whispered something they could not hear.
Claire looked at Ethan and realized there was no doubt left in his face.
He believed it was his brother.
Detective Cole raised a finger, signaling for everyone to keep talking while a technician attempted to trace the connection.
Claire leaned toward the phone.
"Daniel, you left me a key."
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
"Martin Hale's office sent it to me after he died."
"Claire, listen carefully."
Daniel's voice hardened.
"I never told Martin to send you anything."
Claire felt the air leave her lungs.
"Then who did?"
"That's what you need to find out."
Ethan glanced at the photographs covering the hidden room.
"Were you staying here?"
"Not for years."
"Someone was."
"I know."
"Who?"
"The person who has been trying to find me."
Claire looked toward Cole.
"Eleanor?"
Daniel did not answer immediately.
"Eleanor is dangerous."
"She pushed me over the balcony."
The speaker went silent.
Then Daniel said something so softly Claire nearly missed it.
"She wasn't trying to kill you."
Claire stared at the phone.
"What?"
"She was trying to stop you from opening that compartment."
"By throwing me over a railing?"
"You don't understand what was in there."
"Then explain it."
A sudden burst of static cut through the connection.
Daniel's breathing became quicker.
"The recorder wasn't mine."
Claire frowned.
"You told me you hid it."
"I told you we had to hide it."
"What's the difference?"
"It belonged to our father."
Ethan stepped closer.
"Dad recorded something?"
"Yes."
"What?"
Daniel hesitated.
"A confession."
Nobody in the room moved.
Claire felt cold spread down her arms.
"Whose confession?"
Before Daniel could answer, a sharp sound came through the phone.
A door opening.
Daniel stopped breathing for a second.
Then he whispered.
"They're here."
Ethan grabbed the desk.
"Where are you?"
"Don't come looking for me."
"Daniel!"
"Find the original foundation ledger."
"Where?"
"Mom's music room."
Ethan's face changed.
Claire had never heard anyone refer to Eleanor as his mother.
Because Eleanor was not his biological mother.
Ethan and Daniel's mother, Katherine Blackwood, had supposedly died when they were children.
Ethan stared at the phone.
"What did you say?"
Daniel's voice shook.
"Not Eleanor."
Claire's pulse jumped.
"Daniel, what do you mean?"
A crash sounded through the call.
Someone shouted in the distance.
Daniel rushed his final words.
"Katherine didn't die in that fire."
The call ended.
For several seconds, the hidden room felt too small to contain the silence.
Ethan looked as if someone had struck him.
"My mother died when I was eight."
Claire remembered the official family story.
A fire at the Blackwoods' summer residence in Vermont.
Katherine had been trapped inside.
Arthur had survived with burns on his hands.
Eleanor, then Arthur's executive assistant, had helped care for Ethan and Daniel afterward.
Three years later, Arthur married her.
Detective Cole spoke carefully.
"Was Katherine's body identified?"
Ethan looked at her.
"There was a funeral."
"That wasn't my question."
He did not answer.
Claire saw the realization reach him slowly.
Daniel's grave had contained the wrong body.
Could Katherine's have as well?
Cole's radio crackled.
An officer had found Charles Mercer.
He was inside Eleanor's private sitting room.
And he was not alone.
They hurried upstairs.
Two officers stood outside the sitting room with weapons drawn.
Mercer sat on a sofa, one hand pressed against his bleeding lip.
Eleanor stood near the window.
A broken lamp lay on the carpet between them.
Cole stared at Mercer.
"Where were you during the blackout?"
Mercer looked toward Eleanor before answering.
"Here."
"Doing what?"
"Trying to persuade my client to leave the house before this became worse."
Eleanor laughed without humor.
"He was trying to take my passport."
Mercer glared at her.
"For your own protection."
"You hit Detective Cole?"
"No."
"Did you steal the memory card?"
"No."
Claire entered behind Ethan.
Mercer saw her and looked away.
Rosa's accusation had already reached Cole.
"Mr.
Mercer, Rosa Alvarez says she saw you helping Arthur Blackwood force Daniel into a car seven years ago."
Mercer's face went blank.
"Rosa was a teenager."
"That's not a denial."
He rubbed the blood from his lip.
"Arthur was protecting Daniel."
Ethan moved toward him.
"From whom?"
Mercer looked at Eleanor.
She returned his stare.
Something passed between them.
Claire saw it.
"From whom?"
Ethan repeated.
Mercer finally answered.
"From Katherine."
Ethan stopped.
"My mother?"
Mercer nodded once.
"Your mother was alive."
Claire watched Eleanor carefully.
She showed no surprise.
Ethan noticed too.
"You knew."
Eleanor's chin lifted.
"Yes."
The single word detonated through the room.
Ethan stepped back from her.
"For how long?"
"Since before your father married me."
"You let me believe she was dead."
"Arthur made that decision."
"Why?"
Eleanor looked toward the broken lamp.
"Because Katherine tried to destroy this family once."
Claire asked the question Ethan could not seem to form.
"What did she do?"
Eleanor looked directly at Claire.
"She discovered where the Blackwood money really came from."
Mercer closed his eyes.
Eleanor continued.
"And once she knew, Arthur decided no one could ever let her speak."
Ethan's voice became quiet.
"What did he do to her?"
Eleanor's answer was almost a whisper.
"He made the world believe she died."
A police officer rushed into the room.
"Detective, we found the missing memory card."
Cole turned.
"Where?"
"Inside Mr.
Mercer's coat pocket."
Mercer stood so quickly the officer reached for his weapon.
"That's impossible."
Cole stared at him.
"Then someone wants us to think you're the thief."
Claire looked at Eleanor.
Eleanor was no longer watching Mercer.
She was watching Ethan.
Then Claire understood something terrible.
The person manipulating the evidence was not simply trying to hide the past.
May you like
They were turning everyone in the mansion against each other.
And so far, it was working.
