Chapter 6 - A Small Lie
Mara gave them an address on Saturday morning.
It was not Tessa’s house. It was the old bus terminal on Merritt Street, a building demolished three years earlier. She described a locker that had never existed and a key hidden beneath a vending machine that had been sold for scrap.
Dana listened without interrupting.
“You expect us to believe that?”
“You asked for a location.”
“You could be buying time.”
“I’m pregnant and chained to a bathroom wall. What exactly do you think I’m buying?”
Cole laughed despite himself. Dana did not.
“If we find nothing, you lose privileges.”
“What privileges?”
“Food. Water. Privacy.”
Mara’s stomach turned. She looked toward the stained baseboard and forced herself to breathe evenly.
“Then go check the terminal.”
They left for forty minutes. Mara heard the van start, reverse, and disappear down the road. The silence afterward was so complete that she could hear the blood moving in her ears.
She had lied to make them leave. She had also lied because she needed to learn whether Cole was capable of doubt. The answer was not yet clear.
Mara waited until the house was quiet. She pulled the napkin from its hiding place and examined the lighthouse. The emblem’s horizontal lines were not waves. They were the same three bars on Cole’s wrist.
The symbol belonged to Venn Development’s old housing subsidiary, Harbor House Services.
She had seen it on temporary apartments offered to Briar Court residents after the fire.
The bathroom was not a random room. It was part of a property connected to the redevelopment network.
Mara reached toward the loose tile. The chain limited her movement, but not completely. She worked slowly, stopping whenever pain tightened across her abdomen. The tile shifted a fraction and revealed a dark gap beneath it.
Inside the gap was a small brass key.
Her pulse leaped.
The key did not fit the padlock. It fit the bathroom cabinet under the sink. Mara opened the cabinet and found cleaning supplies, a flashlight, and an old emergency radio with a cracked red button.
She pressed the button.
Static filled the cabinet.
Mara turned the dial until a weather report emerged. The announcer mentioned a winter storm moving east and a school closure in Bellwether County.
The radio worked. It was not enough, but it was something.
She tucked it beneath the towel stack and returned the key to the gap.
When the van came back, Cole entered first. His face was gray with cold.
“The terminal is gone,” he said.
“That must have been disappointing.”
He looked at the chain. “You moved.”
Mara said nothing.
Dana came in carrying a new lock. “Where is the drive?”
“I told you.”
Dana lifted the bottle of water and held it just beyond Mara’s reach.
“You don’t understand the situation.”
“I understand it perfectly.”
“Do you?”
Dana tipped the bottle onto the floor. Water spread over the grout and disappeared beneath the toilet.
Mara stared at the puddle. The cruelty was deliberate, theatrical, designed to make her plead. She refused to give Dana that satisfaction.
“You can pour out every bottle in the county,” Mara said. “It won’t change what’s on the drive.”
Dana struck her across the face.
The impact shocked Mara more than it hurt. She fell against the wall, one hand protecting her stomach.
Cole grabbed Dana’s arm.
“That’s enough.”
“She needs to learn.”
“She’s carrying a child.”
“Then she should learn faster.”
Cole released Dana as if her sleeve had burned him.
Mara saw the moment he understood that he had crossed a line long before that morning.
Dana locked the new padlock around the chain and left. Cole remained in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry is what people say when they want to feel separate from what they did.”
He flinched.
“Your brother deserved the truth,” Mara said. “You are helping the man who took it from him.”
Cole looked toward the hall. “There’s a woman in the west room.”
Mara’s breath caught.
“Who?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Does Silas know?”
Cole said nothing.
The answer was obvious.
After he left, Mara slid the emergency radio from the cabinet and pressed it to her ear. The weather report had ended. Static returned, thin and restless.
Behind the static, she heard a voice.
“Is someone there?”
Mara held the radio with both hands.
“Yes,” she whispered. “My name is Mara.”
The voice answered after a long pause.
May you like
“I’m June.”
The house had one more secret than Mara had known.
