Chapter 5 - The House on the Hill
At nine o'clock, a nurse pulled a chair beside Emma's crib so Claire could sit close enough to touch the baby's hand. It was smaller than Claire's thumb. When Emma curled her fingers around Claire's fingertip, Claire nearly broke down again.
"You don't have to go anywhere," Dr. Shah said. "Let the police do their job."
"I'm not leaving her," Claire promised.
She meant it. But the past kept pushing into the room. When Claire was a child, Ruth had forbidden her and Vanessa to play near a locked basement door. She called it the water room. During heavy rain, their mother would sit at the kitchen table and listen to something rumble beneath the floor.
Claire had thought it was an old woman's superstition.
Theo handed Ortiz the map. "There used to be a maintenance entrance under the house. A stormwater gate leads into a drainage channel built long before the development went up."
"And Harborstone wants it sealed?"
"Their plans show it already sealed," Theo said. "That's the problem. The paperwork and the ground don't match."
Claire remembered Vanessa showing up three weeks earlier with a man in a charcoal suit. He introduced himself as Graham Pike, a developer with an offer that would 'change everyone's life.' Claire had told him no before he even named a price.
That night, her mailbox had been smashed.
"I reported it," Claire said. "The officer said it was probably kids."
Ortiz typed the name Graham Pike into her phone. "He's been named in two civil suits for false engineering certifications. Neither got to trial."
A hospital employee appeared in the doorway carrying flowers with no card.
"A delivery for Mrs. Morgan."
May you like
Ortiz took the bouquet first. A white envelope was tucked between the stems. Inside was a recent photograph of Claire's house. On the back, in black marker, someone had written:
YOU CAN SAVE THE BABY. YOU CANNOT SAVE EVERYONE BELOW THE HILL.
