Chapter 7 - The Lake House
I dropped with Marcus as a second shot shattered the windshield behind us.
Ruiz's team stormed the garage. The shooter vanished through a service exit before they reached the street.
Marcus survived surgery, barely.
He couldn't talk.
But before the ambulance took him, he grabbed my sleeve and whispered two words.
"Boiler room."
My father's lake house had been empty since his funeral.
At least, that was what I believed.
Ruiz drove. I sat beside her while Noah stayed with Lily and a police officer at my sister-in-law's house.
The lake house looked exactly the same: gray shingles, wide porch, water black beyond the trees.
The boiler room was in the basement.
Behind the furnace we found a section of wall with fresh screws.
Ruiz pried it loose.
There was a room behind it.
A mattress.
Medical tubing.
Empty saline bags.
A portable oxygen tank.
And dark brown stains soaked into the unfinished floorboards.
Ruiz called crime scene.
I stood in the doorway unable to move.
Claire had been here.
Alive.
Close enough to the road that she might have heard cars passing. Close enough to the lake that she might have heard the same gulls we heard as kids.
On a shelf sat a plastic hospital property bag labeled M. COLE.
Inside were bloodstained clothes I recognized from the night Claire came to my house.
Her navy blouse.
Her watch.
One shoe.
Ruiz said quietly, "Daniel, don't touch anything."
I wasn't listening.
I had noticed writing scratched into the wooden wall beside the mattress.
Four words.
NOAH. DANIEL. TRUST THE BOY.
Claire had carved them with something sharp.
Below the words were thirteen vertical marks.
"Days?" I asked.
Ruiz shook her head. "Could be anything."
My phone rang.
It was Lily.
I answered immediately.
"Hey, baby."
She was whispering.
"Daddy, the police lady went outside."
My skin went cold.
"Where's Noah?"
May you like
A sound came through the phone--glass breaking.
Then Lily said, "There's a man in Aunt Rachel's house."
