Chapter 3 - The Man in Room 317The badge should have been impossible.
Mine had never left my possession.
Except once.
The night Logan disappeared.
I remembered taking it off because the clasp had broken.
I remembered putting it on the kitchen counter.
Then everything after that became strangely blurry.
I had always blamed grief.
Marcus didn't.
He stared at me across the interrogation room.
“You've got missing memory.”
“I was exhausted.”
“You were found three miles from your apartment that night.”
I looked up.
“What?”
Marcus pushed a report across the table.
I had never seen it before.
According to the report, I had been found unconscious beside Blackwater Bridge.
My blood alcohol level was zero.
My hands were covered in blood.
Logan's blood.
I felt my stomach turn.
“Why didn't anyone tell me?”
“Because the report was sealed.”
“By who?”
Marcus didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
The seal at the bottom carried the initials of the police commissioner.
A man named Arthur Voss.
The same man who had given the press the original statement about Logan's disappearance.
I stood.
“I’m going to see him.”
Marcus grabbed my arm.
“You can't.”
“Why?”
“Because Commissioner Voss is dead.”
I stared at him.
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
“How?”
“Suicide.”
Something clicked inside my head.
“Where?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Room 317 at the Meridian Hotel.”
A cold feeling crawled across my neck.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because that's where Logan was last photographed alive.”
I drove there before sunrise.
The Meridian Hotel had been renovated.
Room 317 was now part of a luxury suite.
I waited until the hallway was empty.
Then I used my badge.
Inside, everything looked ordinary.
Too ordinary.
I searched drawers.
Closets.
Behind furniture.
Nothing.
Then I noticed the bathroom mirror.
A tiny scratch ran across its lower corner.
I touched it.
The mirror moved.
Behind it was a narrow compartment.
Inside was a cassette tape.
And one handwritten label.
FOR COLIN.
I found an old player at the front desk and returned upstairs.
The tape crackled.
Then Logan's voice came through.
My brother.
Alive.
Older.
Angrier.
“If you're hearing this, Colin, it means I failed.”
I closed my eyes.
“You need to know the truth. I didn't disappear.”
The tape hissed.
“I was taken.”
I looked at Marcus.
He had followed me.
Logan continued.
“They told me you were involved.”
I froze.
“They showed me photographs of you meeting them.”
My heart pounded.
“I didn't believe them.”
A pause.
“But eventually I started to wonder.”
Another hiss.
“Colin, if you're listening, there is one thing you must remember.”
The recording became distorted.
Then his voice returned.
“Never trust the man wearing a silver ring.”
The tape clicked.
Silence.
Marcus stared at his hand.
He wasn't wearing a ring.
I exhaled.
Then someone knocked on the hotel door.
Three slow knocks.
Marcus raised his weapon.
I opened the door.
Nobody.
Only a folded piece of paper on the floor.
I picked it up.
One sentence.
THE MAN WITH THE SILVER RING IS ALREADY INSIDE YOUR HOUSE.
I looked at Marcus.
Then at the hallway.
May you like
And for the first time...
I wondered whether Logan's warning had been about someone much closer to me than my partner.
