Chapter 5 - The Blue Room
I called Grant before the ambulance reached the hospital.
He answered on the first ring.
“Tell me.”
“There’s a hidden room behind the wine cellar.”
“What kind of room?”
“Lily heard someone crying inside it.”
Grant went silent.
Then I heard him turn away from the noise.
“Are you sure?”
“My daughter is sure.”
“We’re going in.”
“Keep me updated.”
“You stay with Lily.”
“That wasn’t a request, Arthur.”
I looked at my daughter.
Her eyes were closed.
A paramedic adjusted the oxygen beneath her nose.
“I know.”
At the hospital, doctors found two cracked ribs.
A concussion.
Soft-tissue damage around her throat.
Older bruises in different stages of healing.
The kind of evidence Richard could not explain with one fall.
A nurse photographed each injury.
Lily trembled through the process.
I stayed where she could see me.
Afterward, a doctor pulled me aside.
“She’ll recover physically.”
“Emotionally, she needs time.”
“How long?”
The doctor gave me a tired look.
“There isn’t a number for that.”
Grant called two hours later.
His voice had changed.
“We found the room.”
I stood.
“What was inside?”
“Not someone.”
“Something.”
I waited.
He continued.
“Dozens of surveillance files.”
“Audio recordings.”
“Financial documents.”
“And photographs.”
“Photographs of what?”
“Women.”
“Some appear injured.”
“Some are with Richard.”
“Some with business partners.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Blackmail.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Who was crying?”
“We found a hidden speaker system.”
“Recorded voices played on a timer.”
“Why?”
“To frighten Lily?”
“Maybe.”
“Or to make her sound unstable when she told people she heard someone.”
I closed my eyes.
Richard had designed her fear.
He had turned her own home into a trap.
“There’s more,” Grant said.
“Of course there is.”
“We found a locked cabinet.”
“Inside were eight phones.”
“Burner phones?”
“Yes.”
“One received a message while we were standing there.”
“What did it say?”
Grant hesitated.
“Code Black failed.”
“Move the witness before midnight.”
I looked through the glass at Lily.
She slept beneath white hospital sheets.
“Which witness?”
“We don’t know.”
“Any location?”
“No.”
“But the phone received another message ten seconds later.”
I waited.
Grant read it slowly.
“The old man has returned.”
A cold sensation moved through my chest.
They knew who I was.
Not just Arthur Cole, Lily’s retired father.
They knew the man I had been.
“Who sent it?”
“Unknown number.”
“Can you trace it?”
“We’re working on it.”
I looked toward the hallway.
A janitor pushed a cart past the nurses’ station.
A woman in scrubs entered a supply room.
A security guard drank coffee near the elevator.
Everything looked ordinary.
That made it dangerous.
“Grant, lock down the hospital floor.”
“Why?”
“If they know I’m back, they know where Lily is.”
At that exact moment, the fire alarm began to ring.
Red lights flashed above the doors.
A nurse shouted for everyone to remain calm.
Smoke poured from the stairwell.
I ran into Lily’s room.
Her bed was empty.
The window stood open.
The IV line lay cut on the floor.
And on the pillow was a black card.
One sentence had been written across it.
May you like
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT YOUR DAUGHTER ALIVE.
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