Chapter 30 - THE CALL FROM THE GRAVE
The smell was the first thing that brought me back: sulfur, spilled transmission fluid, and the rich, wet scent of torn earth and river mud.
I was suspended upside down by my seatbelt. My forehead was warm with sticky, flowing blood that dripped into my eyelashes, blurring the world into a red haze. The rain was pouring through the shattered windows, soaking my clothes, freezing my skin.
"Ethan..." I rasped, my throat raw from smoke and shock.
Beside me in the twisted wreckage of the back seat, Ethan was motionless. His head was slumped against the crushed roof, a deep gash across his temple, blood pooling on the upholstery. He wasn't responding, but his chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged hitches.
In the front seat, Claire was pinned beneath the collapsed dashboard. She groaned weakly, her fingers twitching against the steering wheel, trapped but breathing.
I fumbled with numb, shaking fingers for the seatbelt release. The buckle gave way with a sharp metallic snap, and I dropped onto the shattered roof of the vehicle.
Every bone in my ribcage screamed in protest. Every breath tasted of iron. But my fingers found the handle of the leather courier case, still wedged beneath Ethan’s body. The lock was mangled, but the papers inside were dry, sealed within their waterproof plastic sleeves.
Up on the bridge, thirty feet above the embankment, two sets of headlights illuminated the broken guardrail. The doors of the Suburbans slammed shut. Heavy tactical boots crunched against the pavement above. They were coming down the slope to finish what the crash had started.
I crawled through the blown-out rear window on my stomach, dragging the courier case behind me through the mud, pulling myself behind the trunk of the massive oak tree that had stopped our fall.
My coat was torn to shreds, my fingers caked in mud and blood. The cold rain lashed my face, stinging the open cut above my eye.
In my pocket, my burner phone—the one device Ethan had completely insulated from digital networks—began to vibrate.
It shouldn't have been possible. The phone had no SIM card; it was programmed only to receive peer-to-peer satellite pings from Haven House’s encrypted internal switchboard.
With trembling hands, I pulled the phone from my soaked pocket and wiped the mud from the cracked screen.
The caller ID was not an encrypted string of numbers.
The caller ID displayed a name that should have been impossible. A name that didn't belong to Tristan, nor Julian, nor anyone currently walking this earth.
The screen flashed:
*SARAH MERCER — INCOMING CALL.*
My mother. Dead twenty-six years.
My thumb shook uncontrollably as I pressed the green icon and brought the phone to my ear.
Above me, twenty yards up the muddy bank, the flashlights of the Apex contractors swept through the rain toward the wreckage.
From the phone’s earpiece came no static. No digital interference.
A woman’s voice—soft, elegant, carrying the unmistakable melody of the lullaby I had forgotten twenty years ago—spoke through the receiver:
*"Elena, darling. Don't go to Judge Holbrooke's house. Julian isn't waiting for you in Westchester. He’s already in the nursery at Haven House."*
May you like
The line went dead.
From the top of the embankment, a flashlight beam suddenly snapped through the darkness, locking directly onto my eyes.
