Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Recording
Ricardo didn’t yell.
That scared me more than if he had.
“Who is this?” he asked.
The caller hung up.
Within minutes, the house was locked down.
Leo sat under the kitchen table with his knees to his chest.
I crawled under beside him.
“Too loud?”
He nodded.
Ricardo crouched outside the table. “Clara, we need that phone.”
“Give him a minute.”
His nostrils flared, but he waited.
When Leo finally handed me the stuffed fox, I passed it out.
A technician opened the hidden phone. There was only one saved audio file.
Ricardo pressed play.
A woman’s voice filled the kitchen.
Sofia.
“If you’re hearing this, something happened to me.”
Ricardo gripped the counter.
The recording continued.
“Do not trust the route changes. Someone close to us is feeding information.”
Then a pause.
“And if Leo starts talking about the blue car, listen to him.”
Ricardo closed his eyes.
I looked at the date on the file.
Two days before Sofia died.
“Why hide this in his toy?” I asked.
“She knew people searched everything else,” Ricardo said.
The technician scrolled farther.
“There’s another file,” he said.
This one was only six seconds long.
Sofia whispered, “Victor knows.”
A chair scraped behind us.
Everyone turned.
Victor stood in the kitchen doorway.
He had come back without anyone announcing him.
May you like
Ricardo replayed Sofia's voice until the words stopped sounding like a recording and started sounding like an accusation. Nobody interrupted him. Even Victor kept his eyes lowered. I watched Leo from beneath the table and understood why Sofia had chosen a toy instead of a safe. Adults searched safes. Adults searched offices. Nobody searched the torn ear of a stuffed fox a grieving child refused to release.
And in his right hand was a gun.
