Chapter 2 - The Letter From a Dead Man
Ethan recognized his father’s handwriting because grief had preserved it better than memory.
Thomas Mercer had been dead for fourteen years.
Yet FOR MY SON curved across the envelope exactly as it had across Ethan’s birthday cards when he was a boy.
The long tail beneath the Y.
The unusually narrow S.
Even the small ink hesitation before the final N.
Lily watched him climb onto the side table and remove the envelope.
“Is it Grandpa’s?”
Ethan looked at her sharply.
She knew Thomas only from photographs.
“Yes.”
Claire made a faint sound beneath the floor.
“Don’t read it there.”
Ethan almost laughed.
“Apparently nowhere in my own house is acceptable to you.”
“Because it isn’t your house.”
That stopped him.
Ethan looked around at the mansion William Mercer had legally left him.
“What does that mean?”
Claire disappeared into the darkness again.
“Get Lily outside first.”
Ethan refused.
Whoever had just placed the envelope could still be nearby. The open lawn might make Lily easier to reach, not safer.
Instead he pulled a heavy chair beneath the chandelier and disconnected the visible camera.
Then he covered the second lens with his jacket.
Only afterward did he open the envelope.
Inside was no letter.
Just a photograph.
Thomas Mercer stood outside the mansion twenty years earlier.
Beside him was Ethan’s uncle William.
And beside William—
Claire.
Ethan stared.
Claire looked perhaps fourteen.
Impossible.
Claire had told Ethan she grew up in Oregon.
The Mercers had lived in Virginia.
On the back, Thomas had written:
THE FIRST PERSON TO LIE WILL BE THE PERSON TRYING TO SAVE YOU.
Ethan looked through the opening.
“Claire.”
No answer.
He held the photograph where she could see it.
Her face appeared slowly.
For the first time since he found her, something other than fear broke through her expression.
Recognition.
“You knew my father.”
Claire shook her head.
“You knew this house.”
Another shake.
“You’re in the photograph.”
“I know.”
“Then stop lying.”
Claire’s eyes filled.
“I didn’t know him as Thomas Mercer.”
Ethan waited.
“He called himself Tom Bell.”
A harmless explanation.
Almost too harmless.
Claire said that when she was thirteen, her mother briefly worked as a housekeeper for a private retreat outside Richmond.
Claire occasionally came with her.
Tom Bell was one of several men who visited.
“He fixed things,” she said. “Locks. Radios. Cameras.”
“Cameras?”
Claire looked upward.
“Yes.”
Ethan examined the photograph again.
His father had been an electrical engineer.
He could have installed security equipment.
But Thomas had never mentioned this mansion.
Neither had William.
Another hidden piece of family history.
Lily had stopped listening.
She was looking at the floor.
“Daddy.”
Ethan followed her gaze.
A faint dusty footprint crossed the polished boards near the west hallway.
Then another.
Brown grit.
The mansion floors had been cleaned that morning.
The footprints began at the hallway door and ended beside the chair Ethan had used.
Whoever left the envelope had stood less than six feet behind them.
Ethan followed the prints.
They stopped at a paneled wall.
No door.
He pressed along the molding.
Nothing.
Lily walked closer and pointed.
“There’s air.”
A strand of her loose hair moved slightly beside the baseboard.
Ethan found a hidden latch.
The panel opened inward.
Behind it was a narrow service passage.
He understood immediately how someone had moved through the mansion without being seen.
Claire whispered from below:
“That’s how he comes in.”
“Who?”
Silence.
Ethan entered the passage only far enough to inspect it.
Fresh shoe marks covered the dust.
One set led away.
Another led toward the room.
Two directions.
Possibly two people.
Then he saw something lying near the wall.
A pink butterfly hair clip.
Lily’s.
He picked it up.
She touched her braids.
“I haven’t worn those today.”
“I know.”
She had stopped wearing butterfly clips more than a year ago.
Ethan turned the clip over.
A date was scratched into the plastic.
September 18.
Tomorrow.
Claire saw his expression.
“What is it?”
Ethan showed her.
Claire began shaking her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“That’s how they do it.”
“How who does what?”
“They give you something real. Something that belongs to you. Then they attach one impossible detail.”
Ethan thought of the photograph.
His father’s handwriting.
Claire standing beside him.
Facts that could be arranged into almost any story.
“What happens tomorrow?”
Claire’s voice became barely audible.
“That depends on whether you believe the wrong person today.”
A noise came from inside the service passage.
Ethan spun around.
Not footsteps.
A phone ringing.
He followed the sound and found an old black mobile phone sitting on a shelf inside the wall.
One incoming call.
UNKNOWN.
Ethan answered.
No greeting.
Only a man’s voice.
“You found Claire sooner than William predicted.”
Ethan’s grip tightened.
“Who are you?”
A quiet laugh.
Then:
“Ask Claire why she was never actually locked in that basement.”
The call ended.
Ethan slowly looked toward the opening.
Claire had heard every word.
May you like
And the expression on her face told him one thing immediately.
The caller had told the truth.
