Chapter 6 - SOPHIA’S CHOICE
Lorenzo could hear Emma asking for her rabbit in the background.
“Get away from the door,” he told Sophia. “Take Emma into the bathroom and lock it.”
“We’re already there.”
“Police are coming.”
A knock sounded through the phone. Then a man’s voice.
“Hotel maintenance.”
Sophia said nothing.
The man knocked again. “Ma’am, there’s a leak downstairs. We need to check your room.”
Lorenzo called the front desk on Mason’s phone. No maintenance request had been made.
“Stay where you are,” he told Sophia.
For ninety seconds, the line carried only Emma’s breathing. Then the room door opened.
Sophia pressed a hand over Emma’s mouth to keep her quiet.
Footsteps crossed the carpet.
A police officer shouted from the hallway. Another voice answered. The footsteps ran, followed by a crash at the far end of the corridor.
Rachel called twenty minutes later. The intruder had escaped through a service stairwell. He had used a copied hotel key.
Sophia refused to spend another night waiting behind a locked door.
“I want to take Emma to my sister,” she told Lorenzo when he arrived.
“We can protect you there.”
She gave him a tired look. “Somebody got into a hotel room you chose. Tell me why I should feel safe anywhere you choose.”
He had no answer.
Rachel spoke with Sophia privately. Afterward, Sophia came back holding a folded piece of paper.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she said.
Isabella had once asked her to gather copies of household invoices. Sophia had noticed unfamiliar charges for drivers who had never picked anyone up and service visits no one remembered. She gave the copies to Isabella.
“Two days before the crash, Mrs. DeLuca called me,” Sophia said. “She told me to stop helping. She sounded scared.”
“Did she say why?” Rachel asked.
Sophia unfolded the paper. It was a note Isabella had left inside a housekeeping binder.
If anything happens to me, ask Claire about the blue ledger.
“Who’s Claire?” Sophia asked.
Rachel and Lorenzo looked at each other.
“She’s the woman in the car,” Rachel said.
Sophia sat down slowly. “Then Isabella knew her.”
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At that moment, Mason called. His team had found a surviving cloud copy of Isabella’s calendar.
Three days before the crash, she had scheduled a meeting with Claire Donnelly.
