Chapter 2 - The Voice Daniel Buried Years Ago
Daniel Mercer did not call the police.
Not yet.
The voice behind the steel door had said his name in exactly the same
soft, uneven way his mother used to say it whenever she was frightened.
“Daniel?”
His fingers went numb around the phone.
For twelve years, Daniel had lived with one unquestioned fact: Evelyn
Mercer was dead.
There had been a funeral in Connecticut. A closed casket. A death
certificate. His father, Charles, had stood beside the grave with one
hand on Daniel’s shoulder and told him the boating accident had left
nothing worth seeing.
Now someone with Evelyn’s voice was breathing behind a hidden door
inside Daniel’s own mansion.
Lily tightened both arms around his waist.
“Daddy, that’s the lady.”
Daniel looked down sharply.
“What lady?”
“The one who talks through my bedroom wall.”
Vanessa made a broken sound near the doorway.
Daniel turned.
His wife looked nothing like the polished woman who hosted charity
dinners downstairs. Her face was gray beneath her makeup, and her hands
shook so badly she had to grip the doorframe.
“You knew,” Daniel said.
Vanessa swallowed.
“I knew someone was there.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Daniel stepped toward her.
“You knew who she was.”
Vanessa’s eyes filled.
“I knew who she claimed to be.”
Another knock came from behind the steel.
This time it was followed by coughing.
Daniel’s anger snapped back into motion.
He examined the hidden door. It had no ordinary handle, only a recessed
keypad and an old-fashioned key cylinder.
“Open it.”
“I can’t.”
“Open it, Vanessa.”
“I don’t have the code.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You expect me to believe there’s a prison inside my house and you
somehow know about it, but you don’t know how to open it?”
“It wasn’t built by me.”
“Then who built it?”
Vanessa looked toward Lily.
That hesitation frightened Daniel more than any answer could have.
He crouched beside his daughter.
“Sweetheart, go into the hallway.”
“No.”
“Lily.”
“She’ll hurt the lady.”
Lily pointed at Vanessa.
Daniel felt the room change.
Vanessa flinched.
“I never hurt her.”
“You tried to keep Lily quiet when I came in.”
“Because she found the wall!”
Daniel rose slowly.
“So?”
Vanessa pressed both hands to her face.
“You weren’t supposed to find it this way.”
Daniel grabbed the hammer again.
“Then I’ll make another door.”
He swung at the steel frame.
The impact rang through the room.
“Daniel, wait!”
He hit it again.
The steel barely moved.
Then the voice returned.
“Don’t break it.”
Daniel froze.
“Mom?”
Silence.
He stepped closer until his forehead nearly touched the cold metal.
“Mom, is that you?”
A faint sob came from the other side.
“My boy.”
Daniel shut his eyes.
For one impossible second he was seventeen again, standing in a hospital
hallway after his younger brother’s surgery while his mother hugged him
and called him those same two words.
My boy.
No one else had said it that way.
“No,” Daniel whispered.
His mother was dead.
He had watched men lower her coffin into the earth.
“Tell me something only she would know.”
A long pause followed.
Then the woman said, “When you were nine, you broke the blue lamp in the
library. You blamed the dog even though we didn’t own one.”
Daniel’s breath caught.
Vanessa stared at the floor.
The woman continued.
“You cried so hard I told your father I broke it.”
Daniel remembered the lamp.
He remembered his mother winking while Charles lectured her about
carelessness.
He had never told anyone.
Not Vanessa.
Not even Lily’s mother, Rachel, before she died.
Daniel turned toward his wife.
“Get out.”
Vanessa didn’t move.
“Daniel—”
“Take one step toward Lily and I swear I’ll have security hold you until
the police arrive.”
“I’m trying to save you.”
“From my mother?”
Vanessa looked at him with desperate disbelief.
“You still think this is about your mother.”
Before Daniel could answer, footsteps thundered in the hallway.
His longtime estate manager, Marcus Reed, appeared with two security
guards.
“Mr. Mercer, we heard—”
Marcus saw the broken wall.
His face changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Daniel noticed.
“You know about this.”
Marcus slowly removed his hand from his radio.
“Sir, I think you should take Lily downstairs.”
“No one leaves.”
Daniel pointed at the steel door.
“Open it.”
Marcus stared at Vanessa.
Vanessa shook her head once.
It was small.
Almost invisible.
But Daniel saw it.
“So you both know.”
Marcus exhaled.
“I know the door exists.”
“Code.”
“I don’t have it.”
Daniel laughed without humor.
“Apparently nobody in my house has a key to the secret cell in my wall.”
Lily tugged his sleeve.
“Daddy?”
“What?”
“The lady told me where the key is.”
Every adult in the room went still.
Daniel knelt.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Where, Lily?”
She pointed toward the ceiling.
“In Grandpa’s room.”
Daniel’s pulse stumbled.
Charles Mercer had not slept in this mansion for eleven years.
His old bedroom had been locked since Daniel inherited the property.
Daniel looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked away.
That was answer enough.
Daniel took Lily’s hand.
“Show me.”
As they stepped into the hallway, the woman behind the wall struck the
door three times.
Then she shouted something Daniel almost missed beneath the echo.
“Don’t trust Charles!”
Daniel stopped.
Lily squeezed his fingers.
And from somewhere downstairs, the mansion’s front door opened.
A familiar male voice called into the foyer.
May you like
“Daniel?”
His father had arrived.
