Chapter 5 - anna reed saw everything)
The next video began three days later.
Anna Reed sat alone in the hidden room.
She looked directly into the camera.
Maya stopped breathing.
Her mother was thirty-one in the recording.
Alive.
Frightened.
Beautiful.
Maya remembered almost nothing about her face except the softness of her smile.
Here there was no smile.
Anna looked over her shoulder before speaking.
The audio was faint.
Jonathan increased the volume.
"If someone finds this, it means I failed."
Maya covered her mouth.
Anna continued.
"Julian Ashcroft is being made sick. I don't know by whom yet. Mrs. Ashcroft knows something is wrong, but she is afraid to tell her husband."
Jonathan whispered, "My father."
Anna looked directly into the camera.
"Miles Hargrove has been coming to the west wing at night. He has medical files. He has keys he shouldn't have."
She paused.
"I saw him exchange Julian's medication."
Jonathan's face hardened.
Anna continued.
"Catherine believes the same thing is happening with company trial records. People listed as healthy are becoming sick. Records are being changed."
Maya looked at Jonathan.
"Catherine knew?"
He stared at his dead wife on the nearby photograph.
Anna's voice continued.
"Mrs. Ashcroft wants to confront him. Catherine says we need evidence first."
The video ended.
Jonathan clicked the second.
Anna appeared again.
"Julian collapsed this morning."
Her voice shook.
"Miles was there before the ambulance came."
She wiped tears from her face.
"Mrs. Ashcroft accused him. He told her if she said anything, everyone would learn what Arthur Ashcroft had authorized in Europe."
Jonathan whispered, "My father."
Anna leaned toward the camera.
"I don't understand all of it. But I heard one name."
She looked behind her again.
"Halcyon."
Maya frowned.
"What is Halcyon?"
Jonathan shook his head.
"I don't know."
The third video had been recorded after Julian's death.
Anna looked exhausted.
"Police accepted the heart condition explanation."
Her eyes were red.
"Mrs. Ashcroft has stopped speaking to me."
She swallowed.
"I think she's frightened."
Another pause.
"Catherine says Miles is keeping files in the old laboratory beneath the greenhouse."
Jonathan closed his eyes.
"The greenhouse was demolished eighteen years ago."
Maya asked, "What was underneath it?"
"I don't know."
The fourth recording was from fourteen years ago.
Maya's chest tightened.
Anna looked older.
This was the year she died.
"The pattern started again."
Jonathan stopped the video.
"What?"
Maya pointed toward the screen.
"Play it."
Anna continued.
"This time it isn't Julian."
She leaned forward.
"It's Catherine."
Jonathan's hand slipped from the mouse.
Maya stared at him.
His face became gray.
Anna spoke.
"She thinks someone is following her. She found payments from Ashcroft accounts to a clinic in Geneva. She says Jonathan can't know yet because she doesn't know whether his father was involved."
Jonathan whispered, "Catherine died in a car accident."
Maya turned toward him.
"When?"
"Thirteen years ago."
"One year after my mother."
He nodded.
Maya felt sick.
Anna continued speaking from the screen.
"Catherine gave me a copy of the ledger. I hid it somewhere Miles would never look."
She held up a small brass key.
The same key Maya wore.
"If something happens to me, Maya will get this someday."
Maya began crying silently.
Her mother smiled for the first time.
"My little girl, if you're seeing this, I'm sorry."
Maya stepped closer to the monitor.
Anna's eyes seemed to meet hers across fourteen years.
"I wanted you far away from this family."
Her expression hardened.
"But if they ever come for you, don't trust the names on the doors."
She lifted a crystal glass.
A rose was engraved into the stem.
"Trust the glass."
The recording stopped.
Maya stared at her reflection in the dark screen.
Jonathan remained silent.
Curtis checked the final two files.
One was corrupted.
The last contained only twelve seconds of footage.
Anna running into the hidden room.
Blood on her sleeve.
She locked the door.
She stared at the camera.
Then she whispered one sentence.
"The rose isn't decoration."
The file ended.
Maya wiped her face.
"What does that mean?"
Jonathan picked up the broken crystal stem recovered from Vivienne's study.
The rose engraving caught the lamplight.
Curtis looked closer.
"Could be a mark."
Maya took the stem.
She rotated it slowly.
The carved petals were unusually deep.
She pressed her thumbnail against one.
Something clicked.
A tiny piece of crystal shifted.
Jonathan stared.
Maya turned the stem upside down.
A minuscule metal cylinder slid into her palm.
Curtis swore.
"A compartment."
Jonathan leaned closer.
Maya opened the cylinder.
Inside was a tightly rolled strip of paper.
The writing had faded.
Only a sequence of numbers remained.
7 14 22 3 1 9.
Jonathan frowned.
"Code?"
Maya remembered Anna's words.
Don't trust the names on the doors.
Trust the glass.
She looked around the hidden room.
The filing cabinets were labeled with names.
But six numbers were stamped into the wooden floor beneath them.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Maya walked to the first.
Cabinet seven.
Then fourteen.
Then twenty-two.
Each had a small brass notch near its base.
Curtis helped move them.
Behind the sixth cabinet, a section of wall became visible.
A steel safe was built into it.
Jonathan stared.
"That was here the entire time?"
Maya approached.
The safe required a key.
She lifted the brass key from her necklace.
It fit.
The lock opened.
Inside were three objects.
A black ledger.
A sealed envelope addressed to Catherine Ashcroft.
And a small medical cooler that was still connected to an electrical line built into the wall.
Curtis opened the cooler.
Inside were several sealed specimen tubes.
Each carried a name.
Julian Ashcroft.
Catherine Ashcroft.
Anna Reed.
And Ethan Ashcroft.
May you like
Maya stopped breathing.
The date on Ethan's tube was yesterday.
