Chapter 1 - The Three PassportsThe third passport had my face on it.
I stared through the narrow gap between the attic floorboards, unable to breathe. The photograph was unmistakably mine: the same dark hair, the same small scar beneath my left eyebrow, the same expression I made whenever someone asked me to smile for a photograph.
But the name printed beneath it belonged to a stranger.
Sophie Bennett.
Caleb examined the passport beneath the yellow light of the hallway. Then he looked at the man in the black raincoat.
“How long until the transfer?” my husband asked.
“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.”
“And the boy?”
“Already accounted for.”
My stomach tightened.
Noah.
My five-year-old son was supposed to be sleeping at his grandparents’ house in Maryland. Caleb had taken him there Friday afternoon, kissing my forehead before leaving and promising to bring him home Sunday evening.
He had even called me that night with Noah laughing in the background.
Now a stranger had just told my husband that our child was already accounted for.
“What about Elise?” Caleb asked.
The man glanced toward the dark staircase leading to our bedroom.
“She comes with you. That's what we agreed.”
“And if she refuses?”
The stranger closed the case.
“Then you leave without her.”
Caleb's face changed.
It was subtle, barely a tightening around his mouth, but I knew that expression. I'd seen it when Noah was hospitalized with pneumonia and the doctor mentioned a possible complication. I'd seen it when Caleb thought his company might go bankrupt.
It was the look of a man watching the walls close around something he loved.
“She is my wife,” he said.
The stranger laughed quietly.
“Not according to the paperwork.”
A sound escaped my throat before I could stop it.
A tiny, pathetic gasp.
Both men looked up.
I pressed myself against the wooden rafters, clamping one hand over my mouth.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then the stranger reached inside his coat and produced a black pistol.
“Someone's upstairs.”
Caleb stared at him.
“It's an old house. The pipes make noise.”
“Pipes don't breathe.”
He started toward the staircase.
My entire body went cold.
The attic had one small window, but Mara had specifically warned me to stay away from it. The door was locked, yet the latch was a flimsy strip of metal that would barely slow down a determined man.
I crawled backward, careful not to disturb the boxes stacked along the wall. My fingers struck something metallic.
An old flashlight.
I grabbed it and held it against my chest.
The stranger reached the bottom of the attic stairs.
One step creaked.
Then another.
My phone vibrated in my hand.
I nearly screamed.
A message appeared on the screen.
MARA: DO NOT LET CALEB OPEN THE ATTIC DOOR. WHATEVER HE SAYS, DO NOT TRUST HIM.
I stared at the message until the words blurred.
Another message arrived.
MARA: HE KNOWS ABOUT THE SECOND FILE.
Second file?
I typed with shaking fingers.
What file?
The response came instantly.
THE ONE YOUR MOTHER HID BEFORE SHE DIED.
My mother had been dead for eleven years.
She'd died in a car accident outside Richmond when I was twenty. Mara had identified her body. Our father had collapsed at the funeral. I'd spent years trying to remember the last conversation I had with her, but grief had turned those final days into a collection of disconnected images.
None of that had anything to do with Caleb.
At least, I had always believed it didn't.
The stranger stopped outside the attic door.
“Elise,” Caleb called.
His voice was gentle again.
Almost tender.
“I know you're up there, sweetheart.”
My blood turned to ice.
“I don't know what Mara told you, but she's making a terrible mistake. Open the door and let me explain.”
I remained silent.
“Please.”
He sounded hurt.
That was the worst part. Caleb had always known how to make me feel guilty when I was frightened, how to turn my suspicions into proof that I didn't trust him enough.
“We can fix this,” he continued. “You and me. We'll get Noah, we'll leave Virginia, and we'll start over somewhere nobody can find us.”
I looked at the passports visible through the floorboards.
Three false names.
Three photographs.
One family prepared to disappear.
“What happens if I don't go with you?” I called.
There was a pause.
Then Caleb answered.
“Then people are going to die.”
The stranger grabbed the attic doorknob and twisted it.
The latch rattled.
“Caleb,” he said, “we're out of time.”
My husband took a deep breath.
“Elise, listen to me. Your sister isn't who you think she is.”
I almost laughed. He was the one standing in my darkened house with an armed stranger and false passports, yet somehow Mara was the problem.
Then Caleb said the words that finally shattered the last piece of my old life.
“Your mother didn't die in that accident. I have proof.”
The doorknob turned again.
I backed toward the far wall, my heart pounding so violently that I felt it in my teeth.
A sudden crash erupted downstairs.
The stranger spun around.
A woman's voice shouted, “FBI! PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”
Mara.
The man in the raincoat swore and bolted down the stairs.
Caleb didn't follow.
Instead, he leaned closer to the crack between the floorboards.
“Elise,” he whispered, his face inches from the wood.
“Whatever happens tonight, do not let your sister show you that photograph.”
I froze.
“What photograph?”
Caleb's eyes lifted toward mine, as if he could see straight through the floor.
“The one where your mother is holding you.”
Before I could speak, the attic door shook under a violent blow.
“ELISE!” Mara screamed from the other side. “OPEN THE DOOR! NOW!”
For the first time in my life, I couldn't tell which person I was more afraid of.
My husband.
May you like
Or my sister.
And somewhere below us, a gunshot tore through the house.
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