Chapter 11
The Woman in the Coat
Simon tried to take the key.
Elise stepped on it first.
“You knew this was here.”
“I knew what it opened.”
“The room beneath the courthouse?”
“No.”
Bell crouched beside her. “What does 01–07 mean?”
Simon’s jaw tightened. “Seven interview rooms. Seven witnesses. Seven versions of the same event.”
“What event?”
“The event that made Vellum valuable.”
Lena had gone pale. “The courthouse fire?”
Elise looked at her. “What fire?”
“The records fire,” Lena said. “Everyone in audio knows about it. A witness archive burned beneath the courthouse. Three people died.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed. “That was ruled an electrical fault.”
“It was ruled convenient,” Simon said.
The study window shattered.
Glass crossed the room in a bright sheet. Bell pulled Elise down. Lena cried out. Simon’s wheelchair tipped backward, and Elise caught the handle before he struck the floor.
Outside, a car accelerated away.
Bell moved toward the broken window, weapon drawn. “Stay here.”
Elise looked at the red mark on Simon’s cheek. “Who knew we were coming?”
Simon looked at the key beneath her shoe.
“Mara.”
“She told someone.”
“She told the person wearing your coat.”
The answer should have angered Elise. Instead, it produced a colder sensation: the certainty that everyone in the room had known the woman existed before Elise saw her face.
Bell returned from the window. He held a small black object between two fingers.
“A microphone,” he said.
Lena stared at it. “That’s not ours.”
“It was planted in the frame.”
The device clicked.
A live light appeared.
From the microphone came the sound of Elise breathing.
Then her voice said, “I know you’re in the house.”
Elise froze.
She had not said it.
The recording continued. Her voice was calm, almost tender.
“You can stop pretending to be Mara.”
Simon closed his eyes.
Bell looked at Elise as if the room had acquired a second door.
The voice said, “You were never the one she wanted to save.”
The microphone transmitted a footstep from the hallway.
Elise turned.
A woman stood beyond the study door wearing Mara’s red scarf and Elise’s gray coat.
Her face was Elise’s face.
But she held Mara’s brass key between her teeth.
“Your father kept the first room,” the woman said. “Mara kept the seventh.”
She removed the key from her mouth and smiled.
“I kept the door between them.”