Chapter 2 - THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE“DON’T MOVE!”
“DON’T MOVE!”
Daniel pulled Lily and Claire behind him as darkness swallowed the room.
For one terrible second, he could hear nothing except his daughter crying and Claire’s ragged breathing. Then another floorboard creaked behind the cabinet.
Closer this time.
Daniel reached for his phone.
Gone.
He remembered leaving it on the kitchen counter.
“Rebecca!” he shouted.
No answer.
The front door slammed.
Daniel cursed and started toward it, but Claire caught his wrist with surprising strength.
“Let her go.”
“She kept you prisoner!”
“No.”
That single word stopped him.
Claire’s fingers tightened around his arm.
“Rebecca found me.”
Daniel stared into the darkness.
“What are you talking about?”
“She didn’t put me there.”
A noise came from inside the hidden passage again.
Daniel guided Claire and Lily toward the window, where gray daylight penetrated the curtains. Claire could barely stand. He slipped an arm around her waist.
“Who did?”
Claire looked toward Lily and hesitated.
Daniel understood.
“Sweetheart, stay beside me.”
“No!” Lily clung harder to him. “Don’t make me go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
Claire reached for her daughter’s hand.
“Never again.”
Rebecca had vanished through the front door, but Daniel could not process her role yet. He had watched her hurt Lily. Nothing could excuse that.
But Claire was saying Rebecca had also rescued her.
Those facts could not coexist neatly.
Reality had become something far uglier.
Daniel moved them toward the kitchen.
He grabbed his phone and dialed 911.
“My wife was reported missing eighteen months ago,” he told the dispatcher. “She’s here. She’s alive. She appears injured. There may be another person inside the house.”
The dispatcher instructed him to leave immediately.
Daniel agreed.
Then Claire whispered, “We can’t.”
He covered the phone.
“What?”
“There’s evidence down there.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.”
“Claire, I just found you alive after eighteen months.”
“And if we leave without what’s down there, the person who did this can disappear.”
Daniel stared at his wife.
The woman standing before him was physically shattered, but something fierce remained behind her exhausted eyes.
“What happened to you?”
Claire looked toward the living room.
“Eighteen months ago, I discovered someone was stealing money from the Mercer Foundation.”
Daniel frowned.
His family’s charitable foundation controlled hundreds of millions of dollars in endowments and property. Claire had served as financial director before Lily was born.
“I found transfers disguised as grants,” she continued. “Small enough individually not to trigger alarms. Together, they were millions.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to.”
Her eyes filled.
“That was where I was driving the night I disappeared. I was coming home to tell you everything.”
Daniel felt sick.
“Who?”
Before Claire could answer, glass shattered somewhere upstairs.
Lily screamed.
Daniel grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter.
Claire whispered, “He’s still here.”
“Who?”
Footsteps crossed the floor above them.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Daniel positioned himself between the staircase and his family.
Police sirens were still distant.
Too distant.
Then a man’s voice floated down from upstairs.
“You should have left the cabinet closed, Daniel.”
Daniel’s blood turned cold.
He knew that voice.
“Marcus?”
Claire closed her eyes.
Daniel looked at her in disbelief.
Marcus Mercer was Daniel’s older brother.
The man who had organized searches for Claire.
The man who had paid for billboards bearing her face.
The man who had sat beside Daniel at police stations and promised they would never stop looking.
Footsteps descended.
Marcus appeared at the top of the staircase wearing a dark jacket and holding a pistol.
Daniel felt eighteen months of memories rearrange themselves.
Every search location Marcus had recommended.
Every false lead.
Every moment he had encouraged Daniel to accept that Claire was probably dead.
“You?”
Marcus smiled faintly.
“You were always better at building companies than recognizing betrayal.”
Lily buried her face against Claire.
Daniel tightened his grip on the knife.
“You took my wife.”
Marcus descended another step.
“She took something from me first.”
“The money?”
“The evidence.”
Claire spoke from behind Daniel.
“I copied everything.”
Marcus’s smile disappeared.
Daniel looked at her.
“Where?”
Claire glanced toward the hidden passage.
Marcus noticed.
And suddenly everything made sense.
The secret room had not merely been a prison.
It was a vault.
Marcus raised the gun.
Daniel stepped forward.
“Police are coming.”
“I know.”
Sirens were growing louder.
Marcus seemed strangely unconcerned.
“That gives us approximately three minutes.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed.
“For what?”
Marcus pointed the gun toward the cabinet.
“For Claire to tell me where she hid the drive.”
Claire remained silent.
Marcus descended another step.
Daniel calculated the distance.
Too far.
Marcus would fire before Daniel reached him.
Lily suddenly whispered something.
Daniel barely heard it.
“Daddy.”
He did not turn.
“What?”
“The woman.”
“What woman?”
“The other woman in the wall.”
Claire’s face drained of color.
Marcus froze.
Daniel looked from Lily to Claire.
“What other woman?”
Lily pointed toward the cabinet.
“I heard two voices.”
Silence filled the house.
Even Marcus seemed surprised.
Claire whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Then someone began pounding against the hidden wall.
Not weakly.
Violently.
Three strikes.
A pause.
Three more.
Marcus turned toward the cabinet.
That moment was enough.
Daniel moved.
He threw the kitchen chair with both hands.
Marcus fired.
The bullet tore through the wall.
Daniel slammed into his brother before Marcus could fire again.
They crashed down the final stairs.
The gun skidded beneath a table.
Claire dragged Lily behind the kitchen island.
Marcus punched Daniel across the jaw.
Daniel answered with years of grief.
He struck his brother once.
Twice.
Then grabbed him by the collar.
“You watched me tell my daughter her mother might never come home!”
Marcus laughed through blood.
“You still don’t understand.”
Daniel hit him again.
“Understand what?”
Marcus looked toward Claire.
“She was never supposed to survive.”
Police lights flashed through the windows.
Marcus smiled.
“But neither was Rebecca.”
The front door burst open.
Officers flooded the house.
Daniel raised his hands and stepped away.
Marcus was pinned to the floor.
Claire sank against the kitchen cabinets, holding Lily.
Daniel thought it was finished.
Then a police officer opened the hidden passage.
“Sir?”
Daniel turned.
The officer aimed his flashlight into the darkness.
There was another locked door approximately twenty feet inside.
The pounding had stopped.
Daniel followed cautiously while officers secured the corridor.
They broke the lock.
The door opened.
Inside was a small room containing surveillance monitors, files, photographs, and a narrow bed.
But no woman.
Only a message written across the wall:
CLAIRE WASN’T THE FIRST.
Below it were twelve photographs.
Twelve women.
Daniel recognized one immediately.
Rebecca Hale.
Her photograph had been taken eighteen months earlier.
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And beneath her name was one handwritten word:
NEXT.
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