Chapter 3 - the woman who called twice)
The woman called again three days later at 2:13 in the morning.
Emily was awake, listening to Marcus breathe beside her, when the lamp on the nightstand glowed with the silent vibration of her phone. The number was different. The voice was the same.
“Don’t speak,” the caller whispered. “Go somewhere he can’t hear.”
Emily carried the phone into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She sat on the edge of the tub with her robe pulled around her belly.
“Who are you?” she asked beneath the rush of water.
“My name is Lena Ortiz. Your husband represented me after I left a shelter called Harbor House.”
Emily knew the name. The charity served women escaping dangerous homes. Marcus hosted its annual fund-raising dinner and appeared in photographs beside grateful families.
“Why would he hurt you?”
“Because Harbor House isn’t a shelter. Not all of it.”
The line crackled. Lena’s breath trembled.
“Women arrive with no money, no family, no one who will ask questions quickly. Marcus chooses the ones he thinks nobody will miss. He makes them sign documents. Insurance policies. Property transfers. Statements saying they ran away. Then men come to collect them.”
Emily gripped the edge of the tub. “Collect them for what?”
“I don’t know. I escaped before I found out.”
“Call the police.”
Lena made a sound that was almost a laugh. “I did. Detective Voss brought me back to Marcus.”
Emily remembered Voss at their wedding, broad and red-faced, lifting a champagne glass to the happy couple.
“Why call me?”
“Because I saw a photograph in his office. You and another woman. Your sister, maybe. She had your eyes.”
Anna.
Emily stood too fast and caught herself against the wall.
Eleven years earlier, Anna had left her evening shift at a diner and vanished. Her car was found at a bus station with the keys beneath the driver’s seat. Police concluded she had left voluntarily. Their mother never accepted it. Neither had Emily, until grief exhausted hope into something quieter.
Marcus met Emily six months after Anna disappeared. He said he had read about the case and admired the way Emily kept searching.
Now his secret folder opened with the date Anna was last seen.
“Where are you?” Emily whispered.
“A motel near the old paper mill. Room twelve. I have copies of the documents.”
“Stay there. I’ll come.”
“No. He watches your car. There’s a nurse at Saint Catherine’s named Ruth Bell. Trust only her. Tell her I have the blue ledger.”
A door slammed on Lena’s end.
She inhaled sharply. “He found me.”
The call ended.
Emily stared at the black screen. The shower ran until the room filled with steam.
When she turned, Marcus stood in the doorway.
He wore black trousers and a white shirt open at the collar. He looked from the phone in her hand to the shower.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“The baby was restless.”
Marcus crossed the tiles and placed his palm against her belly. Emily fought the urge to recoil. He leaned down as though listening.
“Our son needs calm,” he said.
“The doctor still says it could be a girl.”
“It’s a son.”
He kissed her cheek. His skin was cold from the hallway.
The following afternoon, Emily drove to Saint Catherine’s for a routine prenatal appointment. She told Marcus the office had changed her time. It was the first lie she had planned in advance.
Ruth Bell worked on the third floor. She was in her late fifties, with silver curls and tired brown eyes. When Emily said the words blue ledger, the nurse dropped the patient chart she was holding.
“Come with me,” Ruth said.
She led Emily into an empty examination room and locked the door.
“How do you know Lena?”
“She called me. She said my husband is involved with Harbor House.”
Ruth’s expression tightened. “Your husband owns Harbor House through three shell companies.”
“She said she had records.”
“Then she’s in more danger than she understands.”
Emily told Ruth about the motel. Ruth made two calls from a phone she kept inside a medical supply cabinet. Forty minutes later, a man called back.
Ruth listened, then sat down.
“Room twelve is empty,” she said. “The bed is torn apart. There’s blood on the sink.”
Emily’s stomach turned.
“Who did you call?”
“The one police officer I still trust. Daniel Holt.”
“Why him?”
Ruth looked toward the locked door before answering.
“Because his daughter disappeared from Harbor House four years ago.”
The baby kicked hard enough to make Emily gasp. Ruth came around the desk and steadied her.
“Listen to me. You cannot confront Marcus. You cannot let him know Lena contacted you. Go home. Behave exactly as you always do. Holt will investigate quietly.”
“What about Anna?”
Ruth went still.
“What did Lena say about Anna?”
“Only that Marcus had her photograph.”
Ruth reached into the pocket of her uniform and removed a small brass key.
“I found this sewn into my daughter’s coat after she died,” she said. “She volunteered at Harbor House. Two days before her car went off a bridge, she told me she had discovered a room beneath Blackwood House.”
Emily stared at the key.
“My house?”
Ruth placed it in her palm. “Find what it opens before Marcus realizes you know the basement exists.”
That evening, Marcus cooked dinner for the first time in months. Candles burned on the table. Music played softly from the living room. He poured sparkling water into Emily’s glass and watched her take the first sip.
“How was Saint Catherine’s?” he asked.
May you like
Emily kept the glass against her lips.
She had not told him the name of the hospital.
