Chapter 2 - The Dead Man's Voice
Ryan dragged Melissa away from the window.
“Close the blind.”
She obeyed.
Claire remained against the wall, staring at the phone.
“My father died six years ago.”
Nobody answered.
“I buried him.”
Ryan looked at her.
“Did you?”
Claire remembered the funeral.
Closed casket.
Her father, Thomas Bennett, had supposedly died in a highway accident outside Phoenix.
The vehicle burned.
Identification came through dental records.
Claire had been twenty-four.
She remembered collapsing when the police called.
She remembered Ryan staying beside her through everything.
They had been dating only seven months.
Ryan arranged the funeral.
Ryan dealt with insurance.
Ryan even helped sell Thomas’s house afterward.
The realization came slowly.
“You knew him.”
Ryan said nothing.
“My father.”
Melissa whispered:
“Claire…”
“You knew he was alive.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
Claire pulled against the chain.
“ANSWER ME!”
“Lower your voice.”
“My father just called me!”
Ryan suddenly looked toward the window.
Fear again.
That was new.
For weeks, Ryan controlled everything.
Food.
Water.
Doors.
Phones.
But whoever was outside controlled Ryan.
Melissa crouched beside Claire.
“I thought your father was alive too.”
“Why?”
“Because Ryan talks to him.”
Ryan turned.
“Melissa.”
She flinched.
Claire saw it.
“Keep talking.”
Melissa swallowed.
“For months, Ryan would leave around midnight. He said he was meeting Thomas.”
Claire looked at her husband.
“You told your sister my dead father was meeting you?”
Ryan rubbed his face.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
He finally did.
Three months earlier, Ryan received an envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Claire leaving her obstetrician’s office.
On the back:
THE CHILD MUST NOT BE REGISTERED UNDER RYAN HALE.
Claire stared.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who sent it?”
“Your father.”
“You just said—”
“I recognized his handwriting.”
Then came more messages.
Never electronic.
Always paper.
Instructions.
Dates.
Warnings.
The last message arrived two weeks before Ryan chained Claire inside the bathroom.
DO NOT LET CLAIRE LEAVE THE HOUSE AFTER AUGUST 12.
Ryan claimed he believed someone intended to abduct her.
Claire stared at the chain.
“So you imprisoned me?”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“You starved me.”
Ryan looked away.
That answer collapsed immediately.
Protection did not explain the cruelty.
The filming.
The humiliation.
Melissa whispered:
“That wasn’t part of the instructions.”
Claire turned.
“What?”
“The letters never told him to hurt you.”
Ryan’s expression hardened.
Melissa continued:
“He started doing that himself.”
Silence.
Ryan slapped the wall beside her.
“Shut up.”
Melissa jumped.
Claire finally understood something important.
There might be a conspiracy around her pregnancy.
But Ryan had used it as permission to become something he had perhaps always wanted to be.
Then the bathroom window shattered.
Melissa screamed.
A small metal object rolled across the floor.
Ryan backed away.
Claire stared.
Not a weapon.
A key.
Taped around it was a photograph.
Claire picked it up.
Her father.
Older.
Alive.
Standing beside a woman Claire recognized immediately.
Ryan’s mother, Evelyn Hale.
The photograph was dated three weeks earlier.
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On the back were five words:
ASK EVELYN WHO CLAIRE REALLY IS.
