Chapter 3 - THE MESSAGE SEAN LEFT BEHIND
That night, Mave dreamed of fire.
She woke with her hand around someone's wrist.
Declan's.
He was beside the bed.
She released him instantly.
“What are you doing here?”
“You were screaming.”
Mave looked around.
Not the warehouse.
A bedroom.
Declan had moved her to a house overlooking Lake Michigan.
“Where am I?”
“Safe house.”
“You mean prison with better sheets.”
“Basically.”
She sat up.
The robe was gone.
Someone had left sweatpants and a gray shirt.
Her scars showed along her collarbone.
She pulled the blanket higher.
Declan noticed.
He looked away.
That small courtesy unsettled her more than staring would have.
“What did I say?”
“When?”
“In my sleep.”
“Sean.”
Her throat tightened.
“Anything else?”
“Blue door.”
Mave froze.
“What?”
“You kept saying, ‘Don't open the blue door.’”
Memory moved.
Lake house hallway.
Smoke.
A blue-painted pantry door.
Someone pounding from the other side.
Mave threw off the blanket.
“Paper.”
“What?”
“I need paper.”
Declan brought some.
She drew.
The lake house floor plan.
Kitchen.
Hall.
Stairs.
Blue pantry door.
Then an exterior wall.
“There was no pantry on the original floor plans,” Declan said later.
They obtained archived building records.
Mave pointed.
“There was.”
“Not officially.”
Finn enlarged the plans.
Behind the pantry wall was an unregistered storage room.
A hidden room.
The lake house still belonged to a Blake-controlled company.
At dawn, they went there.
Mave insisted.
Declan argued.
She won.
The property had been abandoned since the fire.
Charred beams remained.
Mold climbed the walls.
Mave stopped at the doorway.
Her body remembered before her mind did.
She couldn't move.
Declan stood beside her.
“Want to leave?”
“No.”
“You don't have to prove anything.”
“I know.”
That was why she entered.
The blue door was gone.
But beneath burned plaster, they found blue paint.
Behind it was the hidden room.
Empty shelves.
Old filing cabinets.
A rusted desk.
And words carved into the underside.
D.H.
Mave touched them.
Declan stopped breathing.
Sean.
Finn searched the room.
Inside a ventilation duct he found a plastic-wrapped cassette recorder.
Eleven years old.
Damaged.
But intact.
The first section contained Patrick Blake and Arthur Collins.
Mave's father.
Patrick said:
“Once Chloe marries Gideon, the terminals are ours.”
Arthur answered:
“She's twenty. They're not even dating.”
“Then make sure they do.”
Mave's skin went cold.
The marriage had been planned eleven years ago.
Not by Chloe.
Not by Gideon.
By their fathers.
The recording continued.
Shipping routes.
False manifests.
Cash.
Then Sean's whisper after the men apparently left.
“Declan, if you find this, Patrick is moving weapons through Collins terminals. Arthur knows.”
Mave covered her mouth.
Then Sean said:
“There's a girl upstairs.”
A pause.
“I don't think she knows anything.”
Mave began crying.
Sean had seen her.
“She wasn't supposed to be here.”
Then footsteps.
Sean whispering.
“Someone came back.”
The recording became chaotic.
A crash.
Patrick's voice.
Sean running.
Then fire alarms.
Sean shouted:
“Mave!”
She remembered.
His face appeared at last.
Young.
Blood near his temple.
Smoke behind him.
He wrapped a curtain around her shoulders and shoved her toward the window.
The recording captured him yelling:
“Tell Declan the ledger is under—”
Static.
Mave leaned closer.
“Under what?”
Nothing.
Then one final sound.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Two knocks.
Declan went pale.
“What?”
“That was ours.”
“What?”
“A code Sean and I used as kids.”
“What does it mean?”
Declan looked toward the burned floor.
“Piano.”
Mave stared.
There had been a piano at Collins Lake House.
A baby grand.
Her mother had played it.
After the fire, Arthur told Mave it had been destroyed.
Finn checked insurance records.
It hadn't.
The piano had been removed the morning after the fire.
And according to the shipping document, it had been delivered to Arthur Collins's private residence.
Mave's childhood home.
Her father had kept Sean's evidence for eleven years.
May you like
Inside the house where Mave had eaten Christmas dinner every December.
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