Unknown number.
Everyone in the room seemed to feel the change.
I answered.
No one spoke at first.
Then a woman’s voice, faint and rough with exhaustion, whispered, “Jason?”
My entire body locked.
“Emma.”
Liam slid off his stool. Lucas froze with a strawberry halfway to his mouth.
“Don’t talk,” she said quickly. “Just listen. Are they safe?”
“Yes.”
A breath broke on the other end.
“Thank God.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Emma—”
“No. Not yet. You have to listen to me. The flash drive is not the whole truth. It’s only insurance. Bell Harbor was never about Daniel Price alone.”
I glanced at Claire, who had gone utterly still.
“Who are you running from?”
Emma’s voice trembled. “Someone inside your circle.”
“Victor?”
Silence.
“Emma, is it Victor?”
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I did. But the person who found me knew things Victor shouldn’t have known.”
“What things?”
A sound came through the line. Not static. Movement.
Emma inhaled sharply.
“Listen to the recording from the pier,” she whispered. “Not the motel. The pier. And Jason…”
Her voice softened in a way that tore years open.
“Don’t let the boys hate you for what they’re about to learn.”
The line clicked dead.
Liam stood a few feet away, his face pale. “Was that Mommy?”
I lowered the phone.
“Yes.”
Lucas began to cry.
Liam didn’t. He just looked at me with those icy blue eyes that were mine and not mine, waiting to see whether I would become a liar.
“She’s alive,” I said. “And she wants us to find something.”
Claire opened her laptop at once. The flash drive from the storage unit lay on the table between us like a loaded secret.
It contained folders organized by date.
Bell Harbor.
Motel.
Pier.
Daniel Price.
Victor.
One folder had no label at all.
Claire clicked PIER.
There were three audio files.
The first was wind, rain, distant gulls, and voices too muffled to understand.
The second was clearer.
Daniel Price: “You said Miller would never know.”
Victor: “Miller knows what I decide he knows.”
Daniel: “And the woman?”
Victor: “Emma heard enough to become inconvenient.”
My chair scraped back.
Claire’s hand flew to her mouth.
The recording continued, the wind distorting Victor’s voice but not enough.
Victor: “If anything happens to Daniel, his brother steps in. Richard is easier to manage. Cleaner. Hungrier.”
Daniel: “You’re insane.”
Victor: “No. I’m practical.”
Then another voice entered.
A woman.
Not Emma.
Calm. Familiar.
“Practical men always think they’re the only ones making plans.”
The recording ended.
Claire stared at the screen.
I knew that woman’s voice.
I had heard it every day for eight years.
Slowly, I turned toward her.
Claire’s face had lost all color.
“Jason,” she whispered, “I need to tell you something before you listen to the next file.”