Chapter 3 - THE MAN IN THE GARAGE
I ran before anyone could stop me.
My bare feet slapped against the hotel hallway. Marcus and Lena followed as I shoved through the emergency exit and rushed down the concrete stairs.
“Caroline, slow down!” Marcus yelled.
I couldn’t.
I had already lost five years. I wasn’t going to lose my father too.
We reached the parking garage and heard an engine roar.
A black SUV raced around the corner.
Marcus pulled me behind a pillar as it passed close enough to tear the belt from my trench coat.
The SUV smashed through the exit barrier and disappeared into traffic.
My father lay beside his car.
I dropped to my knees.
“Dad?”
Blood ran from a cut above his eye. His breathing was shallow, but he was alive.
His fingers closed around my wrist.
“Shaw,” he whispered.
“What did he do?”
“He wanted the code.”
“What code?”
Dad looked toward his car. The driver’s door was open. Papers covered the front seat.
“He took my phone,” he said. “But he didn’t get the key.”
Marcus found a tiny brass key clenched in Dad’s other hand.
“What does this open?” he asked.
Dad tried to answer, but his eyes rolled back.
An ambulance took him to Saint Catherine’s Hospital. Lena went with him while Marcus drove me to a safe apartment across town.
On the way, neither of us spoke.
I kept seeing Juliette’s face when the recording played.
She had been shocked, but not surprised.
She knew the recording existed.
“What happened to the man on the tape?” I asked.
“His name is Owen Price,” Marcus said. “He worked maintenance at your family’s lake house.”
“Where is he?”
“Missing.”
“How long?”
“Since yesterday.”
I stared out the window.
The city looked the same as it had five years earlier, but I felt like a ghost passing through somebody else’s life.
At the apartment, Marcus gave me clean clothes and a box containing everything recovered from the clinic: my hospital band, a burned silver bracelet, and a notebook belonging to Dr. Evelyn Hart.
Dr. Hart had treated me in secret. She was the reason I survived.
She was also dead.
Her car had gone off a mountain road two months after Marcus found me.
The police called it an accident.
Marcus never believed them.
I opened her notebook. Most pages contained medical notes, but one sentence had been written repeatedly in the margins:
THE PATIENT REMEMBERS THE BLUE DOOR.
“What blue door?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t know.”
A sharp knock sounded from the hallway.
Marcus drew his gun.
“Federal agent,” Lena called.
He let her in.
My father was stable, but unconscious. Juliette had disappeared from the hospital before officers could question her.
Lena placed the brass key on the table.
“It belongs to a safe-deposit box at First National Bank.”
“Can we open it?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Marcus turned on the television.
A breaking-news report showed my scarred face from the wedding.
The headline read:
MENTALLY ILL WOMAN ATTACKS MERCER BRIDE.
Juliette appeared on camera wearing a hospital blanket.
“That woman is not my sister,” she cried. “Caroline is dead. This person is trying to steal our family’s money.”
The reporter then displayed a DNA report.
It claimed there was no biological relationship between me and Douglas Mercer.
Lena stared at the screen.
“That test was completed in less than two hours.”
“It’s fake,” Marcus said.
My phone rang.
The caller ID displayed my father’s number.
I answered.
May you like
Captain Shaw spoke.
“Open that safe-deposit box, Caroline, and your father dies before sunrise.”
