Chapter 1 - THE GIRL IN THE LOBBY
“Your sister isn’t dead.”
The words came from a muddy nine-year-old girl clutching Victoria Hale’s handbag in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel.
Victoria turned so fast the strap pulled tight between them. “What did you say?”
A security officer crossed the marble floor toward them. The girl saw him, but she didn’t let go.
“Are you Victoria Hale?”
Victoria’s hand rose to the antique emerald necklace at her throat.
The girl reached under her worn hoodie and pulled out another necklace. Its emerald was smaller, but the gold setting was unmistakable: two twisting leaves and a tiny chip near the clasp.
Victoria had last seen it around her sister’s neck.
“Where did you get that?”
“My mom.”
The security officer stopped beside them. “Ma’am, is there a problem?”
Victoria barely heard him. The girl unfolded a photograph softened by years of being opened and closed. Two young women stood on a beach, their arms around each other. Victoria was twenty-three. The woman beside her was her younger sister, Caroline.
Caroline had been dead for eighteen years.
The girl’s voice dropped. “Mom said you’d recognize the picture.”
Victoria took it with shaking fingers. On the back, in Caroline’s handwriting, were four words:
Tory, believe me next time.
Victoria looked up. “What’s your name?”
“Emma.”
“Where’s your mother, Emma?”
Emma glanced toward the revolving doors. “She told me to wait here while she talked to somebody outside. Then a black car pulled up, and a man made her get in.”
Victoria’s stomach tightened. “What man?”
“I don’t know. But Mom told me something else.” Emma leaned close enough that the security officer couldn’t hear. “She said if he found her, I should ask you about the fire.”
Victoria went cold. There had been no fire in the official story of Caroline’s death.
May you like
Then her phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.
STOP ASKING ABOUT YOUR SISTER. THE GIRL IS NEXT.
