Chapter 2 - The Voice Behind the Door
The sound came again.
A weak scrape against wood.
Sarah looked toward Derek.
“Who is in there?”
“No one.”
Frank did not raise his voice.
“Open it.”
Derek rubbed his wrist.
“You can’t order me around in my house.”
Frank glanced at Sarah.
“Is this your house?”
She hesitated.
Derek answered for her.
“Yes.”
Frank’s eyes returned to him.
“I asked my daughter.”
Sarah swallowed.
The mortgage was in both names.
At least, that was what Derek had told her.
She had never seen the final paperwork.
“I thought it was ours.”
Derek laughed bitterly.
“Of course it’s ours.”
The scraping continued.
Then a woman’s voice came through the door.
“Sarah?”
Sarah went pale.
She knew that voice.
“Leah?”
Derek’s younger sister had been missing for two days.
Derek told everyone she had gone back to Richmond after another argument with the family.
Sarah moved toward the hallway.
Derek stepped into her path.
Frank moved once.
Not aggressively.
Just enough to make Derek understand he would not reach her first.
“Move,” Frank said.
Derek obeyed.
Sarah reached the locked door.
“Leah, are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
Her voice sounded dry and frightened.
“Derek took my phone.”
Sarah turned.
“What did you do?”
“She broke into my office.”
Leah struck the door from inside.
“I found the account records!”
Derek lunged toward the hallway.
Frank blocked him with one shoulder.
Sarah stared at her husband.
“What records?”
Derek’s face tightened.
“You don’t understand what she found.”
“That is what you always say.”
Frank took the brass key Derek kept clipped beside the hallway light switch.
Derek reached for it.
Frank caught his hand before contact.
“Try that again,” Frank said quietly, “and this conversation ends differently.”
He unlocked the door.
Leah stood inside the dark guest room wearing jeans and a torn gray sweater.
Her wrists were red from pulling against a plastic luggage strap tied around one hand.
There was no blood.
May you like
No major injury.
But she had been held there long enough to understand Derek never planned to let her walk out with what she knew.
