The landline. I crossed to it and lifted the receiver and held it to my ear. Silence. Nothing. The night before, Daniel had mentioned the recent storm had disrupted the line. He had been so casual about it. So completely, effortlessly casual. I had believed that, too.
“Car keys,” I said.
“He takes them,” Eli said quietly. “He always takes both sets. Every time.”
That single repeated word — always — landed with a weight that no longer needed explanation.
I looked at the locked front gate. At the security panel by the door. At the empty driveway. And then I looked at Eli and made a decision.
“Shoes,” I said. “Get your shoes on. Right now.”
Chapter Five: What Was Hidden Behind the Wall
Eli ran to the mudroom at the back of the house and returned quickly, holding something small in his hand — a compact remote control, older-looking, slightly worn. He held it out toward me.
“This opens the service gate,” he said. “The small one at the far side of the property, on the back road. He doesn’t think I know where he keeps it.”
That remote was our exit. It was enough. We could have left the house that very moment and it would have been precisely the right decision.
But I found that I could not bring myself to walk out of that house without understanding what I had truly walked into four months ago. Without holding in my hands something that could not be undied or dismissed or reframed later. Without making sure that whatever had happened to the two women who had come before me would not simply be absorbed quietly and forgotten.
“Is there anything else?” I asked. “Anything he kept hidden?”
Eli’s eyes moved toward the closed door of Daniel’s private office at the end of the hall.
We went in together.
The room smelled exactly like Daniel — cedar, leather, the particular expensive cologne he wore every single day, a scent I had once associated with safety and now associated with something else entirely. The desk was large and dark-stained and completely cleared of surface clutter in the way that overly controlled spaces always are. Eli crossed the room without hesitating, crouched beside the desk, and pressed a hidden latch built into the side panel near the base.
A small section of the panel clicked and swung inward.
Inside the hidden compartment, neatly arranged: a flash drive. A passport — second one, different name, same photograph. A stack of insurance paperwork, crisp and organized. And a manila folder with my full name written across the front in Daniel’s recognizable, precise handwriting.
I opened the folder.
A life insurance policy. My name on the insured line. My signature on the consent page — forged, but done with enough care that someone unfamiliar with my handwriting would never question it. The amount was substantial. The named beneficiary was Daniel Whitmore. The date the policy had been originated was eight days prior.
Eight days before this Thursday afternoon.
I set the folder aside and looked at what lay beneath it.
Files. Two of them. Each labeled with a woman’s name I did not recognize. Inside each file were pages of handwritten notes — detailed, methodical, written in the same cold and efficient language that Daniel brought to everything he considered a practical matter. Notes about each woman’s daily schedule. Observations about how isolated they were. Assessments of how many close family members lived within driving distance. Evaluations, written plainly and without any apparent emotion, of how quickly — or rather, how slowly — anyone might begin to ask difficult questions if something were to happen to them.
I read enough to understand everything.
I put every document, every file, the flash drive, and the passport into my bag.
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