Chapter 3 - The Man With the Keys
“Stay where you are.”
The officer’s flashlight cut across the hallway.
Another beam caught Emily beside the console, phone in her hand.
Outside, an engine started.
The second officer moved toward the front door while his partner called for assistance.
I carried Lucy into the living room and stayed low behind the couch.
She clung to my shirt.
“Is he taking me?”
“No.”
The word came out harder than I intended.
I softened my voice.
“You’re staying with us.”
Through the window, headlights swept across the ceiling.
Then tires scraped the curb.
The truck was gone before the officer reached the street.
The power returned less than a minute later.
A breaker had been shut off at the exterior service box.
Nothing accidental about it.
Emily stood beneath the chandelier, pale now.
“Paul comes by all the time,” she said.
“No one asked you about Paul.”
She looked at the officer.
“I’m trying to help.”
He asked for her phone.
She refused.
He didn’t argue.
He wrote something down and asked her to remain available while the scene was secured.
A detective arrived twenty minutes later.
Her name was Mara Ortiz.
She had gray at her temples and a way of listening that made people rush to fill the silence.
Emily rushed.
“Caroline was unstable.
She became attached to this house.
We tried to be kind.”
Ortiz looked at me.
“Did you witness that?”
“No.”
“Any threatening messages?”
“Not to me.”
“Any evidence she stole from you?”
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
Only Emily’s word.
Ortiz nodded once.
Later, while a medic checked Lucy’s arm, I sat beside her.
“Why did your mom bring you here?”
“She said we needed the real things.”
“What things?”
“The things that prove.”
She frowned, struggling.
“Mommy said copies could be called fake.”
“Did she know I was away?”
Lucy nodded.
“She said you were coming back today.
We would wait.”
My scheduled flight would have landed the following afternoon.
Caroline had expected to wait less than a day.
Someone had found her first.
Lucy rubbed the rabbit’s torn ear.
“She put me in the little room when she heard his keys.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Don’t answer anybody except Daniel.”
Across the hallway, Ortiz was speaking quietly into her phone.
I looked back at Lucy.
“Why did you call me Daddy?”
Her face crumpled.
“Mommy said you’d stop.”
I couldn’t answer.
Lucy lowered her voice.
“She said if I said your name, somebody might make me leave.”
May you like
Then she reached inside her sweater and pulled out a small brass key.
“Mommy said don’t let your wife have this.”
