Chapter 3 - The Tunnel Behind Room 317
The message on the wall remained perfectly still while the countdown continued.
BRING CHLOE TO ROSEWOOD.
OR HELEN PARKER DIES AGAIN.
01:47.
01:46.
01:45.
For several seconds, I could not breathe.
My mother had been dead for twenty-two years. I had stood beside her coffin. I had watched my father collapse over the polished wood while rain struck the church windows. I had spent most of my childhood trying to remember the exact sound of her voice.
And now someone had written her name beneath our home.
Not died.
Dies again.
“Olivia,” my father said, “we have to move.”
Evelyn lay on the concrete floor beside the open steel door. Blood ran from a cut above her eyebrow and disappeared into her blonde hair.
I dropped beside her.
“Who did this?”
Her eyes struggled to focus.
“He was waiting.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see his face.”
“You said Daniel is alive.”
“He spoke to me.”
Marcus stood in the doorway, staring into the dark tunnel beyond the chair and severed ropes.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” he said.
Evelyn turned her head toward him.
“He called me Evie.”
Marcus’s expression changed.
My father looked between them.
“What does that mean?”
“No one calls me that,” Evelyn whispered. “No one alive.”
The alarm tone rose.
01:22.
Marcus moved quickly to the wall beside the tunnel. A small control panel had been mounted beneath a red emergency light.
He tore off the metal cover.
“We can discuss ghosts after we get out.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to stop the purge.”
“You said the room would ignite.”
“It will.”
My father crouched beside Evelyn and examined her wound.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
He lifted her carefully.
I looked toward the tunnel.
Cold air moved through it, carrying the smell of damp earth and something chemical.
“Where does that lead?”
Evelyn pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Beyond the property.”
“You came through there?”
“No. I was brought.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how did you get into the hidden room without Marcus seeing you?”
Evelyn’s gaze moved toward him.
“Because Marcus was not the only person with a key.”
The countdown reached one minute.
Marcus pulled two wires from the control panel.
The alarm stopped.
The numbers froze at 00:58.
Nobody moved.
Then the timer began again.
00:57.
“Run,” Marcus said.
My father pulled Evelyn toward the stairs.
I stayed near the tunnel.
On the ground beside the empty chair was a small object reflecting the red emergency light.
A gold locket.
I recognized it immediately.
My mother had worn it every day.
I remembered tracing the tiny rose engraved on its surface while sitting in her lap.
“Olivia!”
Marcus shouted from the stairs.
I picked up the locket and ran.
We reached the office as a sharp mechanical click echoed below us.
Marcus slammed the bookshelf shut.
“Outside,” he ordered.
We crossed the patio.
My father guided Evelyn toward the lawn while Marcus grabbed the gasoline can and threw it into the pool.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“If the fire reaches the office, I don’t want that beside the building.”
We had barely reached the far side of the yard when a muffled explosion shook the ground.
The pool water rippled.
Smoke forced its way through the roof vents of the small building.
A second explosion shattered the office window.
Glass spread across the patio.
My father pushed me behind a stone planter as flames appeared along the curtains.
“Call the fire department,” he said.
Marcus grabbed my phone.
“No.”
I stared at him.
“Our house is on fire.”
“The system was designed to contain it.”
“You expect me to trust the design of a secret room built by criminals?”
“If firefighters enter that office, they’ll find the stairway.”
“Good.”
“They will also alert whoever accessed the archive that we survived.”
Evelyn leaned against a tree.
“They already know.”
Marcus turned toward her.
“How?”
She pointed toward the roofline of our house.
A small black drone hovered above the garden.
Its camera faced us.
Marcus picked up a metal serving tray and threw it.
The drone rose quickly, passed over the back wall and disappeared.
My father took out his phone.
“I’m calling the police.”
Marcus seized his wrist.
“Thomas, listen to me.”
My father pulled free.
“You have lied to my daughter for eleven years.”
“I know.”
“You entered her life because someone told you to.”
“I know.”
“You built a surveillance chamber beneath her home.”
“I did not build it.”
“But you used it.”
Marcus said nothing.
My father stepped closer.
“If Chloe is in danger, I will tear apart every person connected to this place.”
“So will I,” Marcus said.
The two men stared at each other.
For the first time, I believed Marcus might be telling the truth about one thing.
He was afraid for Chloe.
That did not make him innocent.
It made him useful.
“Dad,” I said, “don’t call yet.”
My father turned toward me.
“Olivia.”
“If the police come now, Marcus is right. They’ll take control of the property, the files and the tunnel.”
“That is what police are supposed to do.”
“And whoever sent that message will disappear.”
“You cannot investigate this yourself.”
“I’m not planning to.”
I looked at Marcus.
“He is.”
Marcus did not object.
My father stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
“You trust him?”
“No.”
“Then why keep him here?”
“Because he knows what Rosewood is.”
“I know pieces,” Marcus said.
“Then start putting them together.”
Smoke continued rising from the pool house, but the flames remained trapped inside the office. The hidden fire system had apparently sealed the lower chamber.
I opened the locket.
Inside were two tiny photographs.
One showed my mother at approximately thirty years old.
The second showed a young boy.
He could not have been older than five.
He had Marcus’s eyes.
On the back of the locket, beneath the photograph, someone had scratched a date.
June 14, 1991.
Marcus stared at it.
“That was three years before I was born.”
Evelyn reached toward the locket.
Her hand trembled.
“Where did you find that?”
“In the room.”
Her face went pale.
“It was taken from Helen the night of the crash.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I put those photographs inside it.”
My father looked at her.
“Who is the boy?”
Evelyn closed the locket.
“Daniel’s son.”
Marcus stepped forward.
“Was he my father?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“Then why does he look like me?”
Evelyn’s eyes filled with grief.
“Because he was you.”
The garden became silent except for the soft crackling of the fire.
Marcus laughed once, without humor.
“That date is before I was born.”
“That is the date the photograph was taken.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Your birth certificate is false.”
“I already know that.”
“So is your age.”
Marcus stared at her.
I looked from the boy’s photograph to the man standing beside me.
“How old is he?”
Evelyn pressed the locket into my palm.
“Forty.”
Marcus stepped backward.
“No.”
“You were five when Rosewood closed.”
“I’m thirty-five.”
“You were told you were thirty-five.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
Evelyn’s voice softened.
“Your name was not Marcus Parker.”
“Parker is Olivia’s surname.”
“Marcus Reed, then. Whatever name they assigned you later.”
“What was my real name?”
Evelyn looked at him for several seconds.
“Gabriel Rose.”
My father sat slowly on the edge of a patio chair.
The name affected him.
“You knew him,” I said.
Thomas nodded.
“I saw him once.”
“When?”
“The day before Helen died.”
Marcus turned toward him.
“Where?”
“At the Rosewood clinic.”
“You said you didn’t know what Rosewood was.”
“I knew it was a place. I didn’t know what they were doing there.”
“Why were you there?”
“Helen called me. She said she had found a child who had been reported dead.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“Gabriel.”
My father looked at Marcus.
“You were sitting on the floor of a locked office. You had a red wooden train in your hand.”
Marcus’s face lost all color.
He touched his left wrist.
A pale scar crossed it.
“I remember a train.”
Evelyn began to cry.
Marcus looked at her.
“You knew me.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me marry Olivia without telling me.”
“I was ordered not to interfere.”
“By whom?”
“Your mother.”
“My mother is alive?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“She was when Rosewood closed.”
“Who was she?”
Evelyn looked toward the burned office.
“Helen Parker.”
My father stood so quickly that the chair fell backward.
“No.”
The word came from all three of us.
Evelyn seemed to shrink beneath our disbelief.
“I am sorry.”
I could hear my heartbeat.
“My mother was his mother?”
“She carried him out of Rosewood.”
“Then what was I?”
Evelyn looked at me.
“You were the reason she went back.”
I stepped closer.
“What does that mean?”
“Helen believed another child had been placed inside her family.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
My father shook his head violently.
“She gave birth to Olivia.”
“She gave birth to a daughter,” Evelyn said. “But the infant Thomas brought home was not necessarily the same child.”
My father’s face twisted.
“You have no proof.”
“I helped prepare the records.”
“You switched babies?”
“No.”
“But you knew it happened.”
“I knew substitutions were ordered.”
I felt dizzy.
Marcus reached toward me, but I moved away.
“Don’t.”
He lowered his hand.
My father stared at Evelyn.
“Who ordered it?”
“The Rosewood director.”
“Name.”
“Dr. Silas Vale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Marcus reacted differently.
He looked toward the house.
“Vale is my father’s private physician.”
“The man who raised you?” I asked.
Marcus nodded.
“He has treated our family for as long as I can remember.”
Evelyn gave a weak, bitter laugh.
“He did more than treat them.”
“What?”
“He created them.”
A siren sounded in the distance.
My father looked at his phone.
“I called before you stopped me.”
Marcus swore.
“How long?”
“Six minutes.”
“We need to leave.”
“I’m not running from the police.”
“You’re not running from them. You’re leaving before Vale’s people arrive wearing their uniforms.”
My father stared at him.
“You think he controls the police?”
“He controls enough of them.”
The sirens grew louder.
Evelyn pushed herself away from the tree.
“There’s another exit through the tunnel.”
“The room is burning,” I said.
“The tunnel is sealed from the archive. It may still be open from the far side.”
Marcus looked toward the black smoke.
“How far does it go?”
“Almost a mile.”
“To where?”
“The old carriage house near the lake.”
My father looked at me.
“Take Evelyn and go.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll stay and speak to the fire department.”
“No.”
“Olivia, someone has to make this look normal.”
“Nothing about this looks normal.”
“Then someone has to give them a believable lie.”
Marcus picked up a garden hose and began spraying water toward the office roof.
“I’ll stay.”
I stared at him.
“You expect me to leave Chloe’s father behind with armed strangers?”
“You don’t trust me anyway.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
He looked at me.
“Go to Rebecca’s house. Get Chloe. Do not use your car. Do not use your phone. Take the tunnel to the carriage house, then go to the bank.”
I held up the silver key.
“Box 317.”
He nodded.
“If the archive was destroyed, the box may hold the only original evidence left.”
“What will you tell the police?”
“That an electrical fire started after the party.”
“And the hidden room?”
“The lock is heat activated. It will seal permanently.”
My father looked at the smoke.
“You knew that because you planned to burn it.”
Marcus met his eyes.
“Yes.”
At least he did not lie.
The sirens reached our street.
Red lights flashed beyond the front hedge.
Evelyn gripped my arm.
“We have to move.”
I looked at Marcus one last time.
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“You shouldn’t.”
He placed something in my hand.
His wedding ring.
Inside the band was a tiny memory card.
“I copied part of the archive three months ago.”
“You had evidence all this time?”
“I was trying to identify everyone involved before I told you.”
“Or before you destroyed it?”
His silence hurt more than an answer.
“What is on this?”
“Birth records, payments, photographs and a list of children.”
“Is my name there?”
“Yes.”
I closed my fingers around the ring.
“What does it say?”
Marcus looked toward the approaching emergency vehicles.
“Your file was marked replacement incomplete.”
I felt the world shift again.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
He stepped away and turned on the hose.
My father opened the hidden bookshelf while Evelyn and I entered the smoke-filled office.
The stairs were blackened but passable.
Below us, the archive room had been sealed behind a thick fire door. The tunnel beyond room 317 remained open.
My father handed me a flashlight.
“I’ll follow after the police leave.”
“You promise?”
“I already lost your mother once.”
His voice broke.
“I will not lose you.”
I hugged him.
Then Evelyn and I entered the tunnel.
The concrete passage narrowed after fifty feet. Water covered the floor, and rusted electrical wires hung from the ceiling.
For nearly ten minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then I heard a sound behind us.
Footsteps.
I turned.
The tunnel was empty.
“Marcus?” I called.
No answer.
Evelyn grabbed my hand.
“Turn off the flashlight.”
We stood in complete darkness.
The footsteps continued.
Slow.
Measured.
Coming closer.
A white beam appeared around the bend behind us.
Someone was following.
Evelyn pulled me forward.
We began to run.
The tunnel split into two passages.
A faded rose had been painted beside the left entrance.
A black number 17 marked the right.
I remembered the paper Chloe had carried.
“The numbers are directions,” I whispered.
Evelyn looked at me.
“Take seventeen steps right.”
We entered the right passage and counted.
At the seventeenth step, we found a steel lever embedded in the wall.
I pulled it.
A hidden door opened beside us.
We slipped inside and closed it just as the light reached the intersection.
Through a narrow crack, I saw a man walk past.
He wore a firefighter’s uniform.
His face was hidden behind a breathing mask.
In his right hand, he carried a pistol.
He stopped beneath the painted rose.
Then his radio crackled.
A woman’s voice spoke through it.
“Subject has entered the tunnel. Recover Parker alive.”
The man answered.
“Which Parker?”
There was a brief pause.
Then the woman said something that froze every part of me.
“The original daughter.”
May you like
The firefighter turned toward our hidden door.
And raised his pistol.
