Chapter 8 - Margaret’s Confession
Daniel called his mother.
Margaret answered immediately.
“Daniel?”
“Where are you?”
Silence.
“Mom.”
“At home.”
“Are you?”
Another silence.
Then:
“No.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Are you at the storage building?”
“Yes.”
“Is Sarah with you?”
Margaret began crying.
“She was.”
Was.
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
“She found the room.”
“What room?”
“The room Nathan discovered.”
Daniel told Laura to stay with the children.
Aaron came with him.
The storage building stood behind an abandoned law office once owned by William Mercer.
Inside, dust covered everything except one path.
Someone had been there recently.
Margaret waited beside a steel door.
She looked twenty years older than she had the previous Sunday.
Daniel didn’t hug her.
“Where is Sarah?”
“She left.”
“With who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop lying.”
Margaret flinched.
Then she gave him a key.
Inside the room were shelves of legal files.
Hundreds.
Custody cases.
Psychological evaluations.
Settlement agreements.
William and Cross had preserved everything.
Nathan discovered the archive because William brought him there one afternoon.
Nathan read one file.
The Bennett file.
Daniel frowned.
“Thomas Bennett?”
Margaret nodded.
Thomas had discovered William’s operation months before Nathan vanished.
William pressured him into silence by threatening his daughters.
Laura.
And five-year-old Sarah.
That was why Thomas initially lied about seeing Nathan.
He was terrified.
“But Sarah remembered.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Margaret looked at Daniel.
“She remembered me helping Nathan.”
The woman near the tunnel.
Margaret.
She had given Nathan money and directions.
Then returned home and lied to William.
Daniel whispered:
“You knew he survived.”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
“Seven years.”
Nathan sent letters through intermediaries.
Then they stopped.
Margaret assumed William found him.
Until six months ago.
A letter arrived.
Nathan was alive.
He wanted the archive exposed.
“Why not go to police?”
Margaret looked around.
“Because these files include judges, attorneys, doctors, families. Nathan didn’t know who was safe.”
Daniel understood.
“Did Nathan send Sarah?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Margaret handed him the most recent letter.
Daniel read it.
If Sarah Bennett remembers the tunnel, keep her away from Cross.
Daniel looked at Aaron.
Aaron went pale.
“Cross?”
Margaret whispered:
“We assumed it meant Alan.”
Dr. Alan Cross had supposedly died nine years earlier.
Aaron shook his head.
“My father is dead.”
Margaret looked at him.
“Did you see his body?”
Aaron stopped.
No.
He hadn’t.
Then Daniel noticed something else.
The handwriting on Nathan’s newest letter was different from the older ones.
Someone had been impersonating Nathan.
Just as someone had manipulated Sarah.
The entire mystery shifted.
Perhaps Nathan hadn’t returned at all.
Then a sound came from behind the archive shelves.
Three knocks.
Emily’s apartment.
The same pattern.
Three knocks.
Daniel moved the shelf.
Behind it was another door.
May you like
And from the other side, my voice whispered:
“Daniel?”
