Chapter 3 - The Blue Door
Pike snatched Margaret's phone. "Gone where?"
Claire didn't wait. She swung the golf club into the nearest guard's shin. He went down with a curse. She bolted through the office doorway, barefoot now, one high heel abandoned beneath the table.
"Claire!" Ethan shouted.
She ran left. A blue door stood at the end of the corridor, half-hidden by a rolling cart of glassware. The brass key turned on the first try.
She was halfway down the stairs when Ethan caught up.
"Get away from me."
"Ellie needs both of us."
"She said not to trust you."
He flinched as if she had slapped him. "I heard."
A door slammed above them. Pike's men.
Ethan pulled Claire through the twenty-ninth-floor landing into a dark utility room. They crouched behind stacks of folded banquet chairs while boots thundered past.
"What did you give your mother?" Claire whispered.
"Nothing."
"You lie like her. You look away first."
He stopped looking away. "I signed a report nine years ago. I thought it was routine. It wasn't."
Claire's mouth went dry. Nine years ago, an apartment building called Riverbend had burned. Fourteen people died, including her fourteen-year-old brother, Tommy.
"What report?"
"The one that said the rear exits were safe."
A metal clatter sounded outside. Claire covered her mouth. Ethan waited until the footsteps faded.
"You knew my brother died there," she whispered.
"I didn't know Vale Development owned Riverbend. Not then."
"You married me knowing you'd signed that paper?"
He had no answer.
Claire backed away from him, the brass key digging into her skin. She wanted to scream and hit him.
A phone buzzed in the cart. It wasn't Ethan's. He fished out a cheap prepaid cell and glanced at a new message.
A grainy picture showed Ellie inside a moving van. Behind her, through the rear window, stood the blue steel arches of the old North Pier bridge.
Below the photo were five words:
MIDNIGHT. ORIGINAL FILE. COME ALONE.
May you like
Another message appeared.
IF ETHAN COMES, WE BURY HER.
