Chapter 2 - The Room Inside the Wall
Daniel crossed the study in three steps.
The scream came again, muffled behind the bookcase.
"Help me!"
Noah grabbed Lily's hand. Emma cried from the hallway.
Vanessa backed toward the foyer.
Daniel pressed both hands against the shelves. "Where's the latch?"
He remembered Claire teasing him years ago about the house having "old-money secrets." He had assumed she meant dumbwaiters and servant stairs.
Lily pointed to a carved wooden rose near the bottom shelf.
"Mom pressed that once."
Daniel pushed it.
The bookcase clicked and swung inward.
A narrow passage appeared.
Inside, someone was on the floor.
"Maya?"
The family's former housekeeper looked up, bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow.
"Lock the door," she gasped.
Daniel pulled her into the study.
"Who did this?"
Maya looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa ran.
"Dad!" Noah shouted.
Daniel lunged toward the hall, but Maya caught his sleeve.
"Let her go. Protect the kids."
He stopped.
Maya had disappeared from the household three months after Claire. Vanessa told Daniel she quit without notice.
"Where have you been?"
"Hiding."
"Why were you inside my wall?"
"Because Mrs. Carter left something there."
Maya reached into her coat and handed him a flash drive.
"Claire gave me instructions before she vanished. If anything happened to her, I was supposed to come back when you stopped trusting Vanessa."
Daniel looked toward the front door.
Vanessa's car roared away.
"The bracelet?"
Maya's eyes filled. "I found it in the passage. Claire hid it there with the drive."
Lily unfolded the papers she had found.
The top page was a death certificate.
CLAIRE ELIZABETH CARTER.
Date of death: eight days from today.
Daniel stared at it.
"This hasn't happened yet."
Maya nodded. "That's the point."
"Who prepared it?"
At the bottom was the name of a physician.
DR. HAROLD VOSS.
Daniel knew the name.
Voss ran a private psychiatric facility outside the city called Grayhaven.
Seven months earlier, Vanessa had suggested Daniel check himself into Grayhaven because his search for Claire was "becoming obsessive."
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
Daniel answered.
A woman breathed on the other end.
Then, barely audible, she whispered:
"Danny?"
May you like
Daniel stopped breathing.
It was Claire's voice.
