Chapter 6 — The Woman on the Screen

We left after dark.

Before going downstairs, I stopped outside Rosie’s room.

She sat on the rug with Mrs. Alden, arranging paper animals into what she called a very strict school.

The fox had apparently been suspended.

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“With your father.”

Her hands stopped.

“Will you come back?”

“Yes.”

The answer came before caution could stop it.

I couldn’t leave her with anything else.

She held out a paper rabbit.

“Take this.”

I slipped it into my jacket pocket.

“Does it know how to behave?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll get along.”

She smiled, but her eyes followed me to the door.

In the hallway, Jericho was waiting.

“Mateo has doubled the guards,” he said. “Mrs. Alden stays with her. Nobody comes through the gate without direct confirmation.”

I nodded.

He looked at my pocket.

“What did she give you?”

“A difficult rabbit.”

His expression softened.

Only briefly.

Then we went downstairs.

The oceanarium stood at the edge of the bay behind fencing bent by years of storms.

Most of the sign was gone.

Beyond the entrance, shattered windows reflected our headlights.

Mateo drove past the main gate and stopped near a service road. Another vehicle waited beneath a line of palms.

Four guards joined us.

Jericho checked his pistol before stepping out.

I watched the movement.

Efficient.

Familiar.

I had seen weapons before. In this moment, the distance between knowing what he was and standing beside him became very small.

He noticed.

“You can still stay in the car.”

“No.”

“Then come here.”

He adjusted the fastening on the protective vest beneath my jacket.

His knuckles brushed my collarbone.

I forgot, for one ridiculous second, why we were there.

He stepped back.

“Stay close enough that I can reach you.”

“I understand.”

Mateo opened the service door.

The newer lock had scratches around its casing.

Inside, the air smelled of damp concrete and old seawater.

Our lights moved over pipes, peeling notices, and a row of empty lockers.

I kept one hand on the strap of my bag.

Inside were copies of the drawings, the translation key, and a notebook.

The originals were locked in Jericho’s office.

We reached a junction.

One passage sloped toward the public entrance. The other descended beneath a faded sign marked MAIN TANK ACCESS.

“Under fish,” I whispered.

Mateo took the lower passage.

We followed.

The tank above us was empty, its viewing panels opaque with grime. Beyond them, the shapes of artificial coral stood in shallow pools.

At the bottom of the stairs was a glass-walled room.

I recognized it from Gideon’s photograph.

Cabinet nineteen stood against the far wall.

The door had an electronic keypad.

Jericho looked at me.

“Did the drawings give you a code?”

“Maybe.”

I spread the copies on a dry section of the counter.

The location pages had small marks beside the rabbits’ paws. I had treated them as decoration.

There were four groups.

I wrote down the corresponding numbers.

Mateo checked the room while I worked.

Jericho stood beside the doorway.

I entered the sequence.

A red light blinked.

Wrong.

I studied the drawings again.

The third rabbit faced left.

“Celeste used to reverse the order when they faced the margin.”

I changed the middle pair.

The lock clicked.

I stepped back as Jericho opened the cabinet.

Inside lay a ledger, a small recorder, and a white envelope.

His name was written across the envelope.

I knew the handwriting before he touched it.

He handed the ledger to Mateo.

Then he switched on the recorder.

Celeste’s voice filled the room.

“Jericho, if you’re hearing this, Nora has returned.”

My throat closed.

For eleven months, I had tried to remember exactly how she sounded.

Now I wished I hadn’t.

“You will want to blame her,” the recording continued. “Don’t. Nora was always useful because she couldn’t leave a frightened person alone.”

Jericho glanced at me.

I stared at the recorder.

“Kindness is a dependable weakness. You should remember that when you decide whom to trust.”

“That’s enough,” Jericho said.

“No.” I caught his hand. “Keep playing it.”

There was a quiet rustle on the recording.

“The accounts contain more than money. Names. Payments. Favors people would prefer to forget. Your uncle was beginning to ask the wrong questions.”

Mateo looked up.

“The ledger will show you where to start. Dr. Vane can explain what you don’t understand.”

I pulled my hand away.

“She wanted him here.”

Jericho stopped the recording.

“Or she wanted us to think that.”

“No. Listen to the first sentence. She knew you’d find me. She knew you’d bring me.”

Mateo was already moving toward the door.

“We leave. Now.”

The first shot struck the glass behind him.

It burst inward.

A guard fell against the counter.

Jericho grabbed me around the waist and dragged me behind the cabinet.

Another shot punched through the open door.

“Down.”

I dropped to my knees.

Mateo returned fire from the doorway. Someone shouted in the passage.

The lights went out.

For a second, all I could see was the glow of a fallen flashlight.

Jericho crouched beside me, one hand against the back of my head.

“Stay here.”

He moved just far enough to look around the cabinet.

I pulled the wounded guard toward us by the back of his vest.

He cried out.

Blood spread beneath his hand.

I pressed my folded jacket against the wound.

“Hold this.”

His fingers closed over mine.

“I can’t.”

“You can. Look at me.”

A speaker crackled overhead.

“Jericho.”

Vane.

His voice was as calm as it had been beside Rosie’s sitting room.

“Leave the ledger and bring Nora into the passage.”

Jericho fired toward movement beyond the glass.

“You should have chosen another house.”

“I chose yours because you believed it was safe.”

Mateo shouted for a rear exit.

One of the guards checked the maintenance door behind us.

Locked.

I slid my bag across the floor, keeping the notebook inside.

The recorder lay beside the cabinet.

I snatched it up.

Jericho looked down.

“Leave it.”

“It’s evidence.”

“Lennox—”

The speaker crackled again.

“You’re wasting time. Your daughter doesn’t have much.”

Jericho went still.

“She’s at home.”

“Check your phone.”

He pulled it out.

No signal.

Then the screen lit with an incoming call through the building’s local network.

A connection someone had prepared.

He answered.

The video was shaky at first.

A wall.

A strip of pale carpet.

Then Rosie.

She sat in a chair with something dark wrapped around her wrists.

Mrs. Alden was on the floor behind her, blood running from a cut above her eyebrow.

I felt the wounded guard’s grip tighten.

Jericho stared at the screen.

“Rosie.”

She lifted her head.

“Daddy?”

I had never heard his voice like that.

Not loud.

Not cold.

“Look at me, sweetheart.”

Someone outside the frame touched Rosie’s shoulder.

A woman’s hand.

A wedding ring caught the light.

I knew the ring.

I had helped choose it from a photograph Celeste sent me before the wedding.

The hand moved.

Pale hair entered the frame.

Then a face I had kept in a metal box beneath my bed.

For a moment, my mind refused to understand.

I had cried for her.

I had feared her husband because she told me to.

I had spent five years carrying gratitude like a debt.

Celeste Blackwood looked into the camera.

“Hello, darling.”

Jericho didn’t move.

The woman on the screen smiled.

And every kindness I remembered from her began to look like something else.