Chapter 2 - THE GIRL WHO DIED
“Emily?”
The little girl’s voice came through the burner phone again.
Small.
Uncertain.
Alive.
Emily’s knees almost gave out.
Luca caught her elbow before she hit the floor.
“Who is she?”
Emily couldn’t answer.
The voice on the phone whispered, “Em? Are you there?”
Emily’s face crumpled.
“Sarah?”
Silence.
Then the child began crying.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
“Please come get me.”
Emily pressed one hand over her mouth.
Luca stared at her.
“Your sister?”
Emily looked at him.
“My cousin.”
The answer seemed simple.
Nothing about Emily’s expression was simple.
“She died when she was seven.”
Luca’s grip tightened around the burner phone.
“How?”
Emily swallowed.
“A fire.”
Sarah’s breathing crackled through the speaker.
“Emily, the lady said you’d come.”
“What lady?” Luca asked.
The little girl immediately went silent.
Emily shot him a warning look.
“Sarah, honey, it’s okay. Tell me where you are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Look around.”
“A big room.”
“What do you see?”
“Saint Mary.”
Emily closed her eyes.
Luca understood first.
“The school.”
Sarah whispered, “She has a blue coat.”
Then the line disconnected.
Emily snatched the burner from Luca and called back.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
“Sarah died fifteen years ago,” she said.
“You attended the funeral?”
Emily hesitated.
Luca noticed.
“No.”
“My aunt wouldn’t let me.”
“Why?”
“Because she blamed my father.”
“For the fire?”
Emily stared at the brass key in Luca’s hand.
“My father worked maintenance at St. Agnes.”
The abandoned girls’ school.
The address Isabella had left.
Luca felt the pieces shift.
“What was Sarah doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said she died in a fire.”
“At the school.”
That changed everything.
Luca reached for his phone.
Emily stopped him.
“If you send twenty armed men out there, whoever has your mother will see them coming.”
“My mother is seventy-one.”
“And Sarah sounds seven.”
Luca looked at her sharply.
Emily heard what she had just said.
“She sounded exactly the same.”
Fifteen years.
Same voice.
Same age.
Impossible.
Unless—
“That recording wasn’t live,” Luca said.
Emily stared at him.
He picked up the burner.
“The pauses were wrong.”
“What?”
“She never responded to me. Only to phrases you said.”
He replayed the call log.
No incoming number.
A programmed audio file had triggered through the phone.
Someone had weaponized a dead child’s voice.
Emily turned away, shaking.
“That’s sick.”
“Yes.”
“But they had her voice.”
“Yes.”
“And they knew I’d recognize it.”
“Yes.”
Emily looked back at him.
“So whoever is doing this knew me before I ever came here.”
That was the part Luca disliked most.
Daniel appeared at the door.
“We found Mrs. Romano’s driver.”
“Where?”
“Garage.”
“Alive?”
“Yes. Drugged.”
Anthony came behind him.
“What the hell is happening?”
Emily flinched at his voice.
Luca noticed.
Anthony noticed too.
His face hardened.
“You still think I did something to her?”
“I think she recognizes your voice.”
Anthony looked at Emily.
She stared at the floor.
“Say it,” he told her.
Luca stepped between them.
“Don’t order her.”
Anthony’s anger cracked.
“Our aunt is missing.”
“My mother.”
“My aunt.”
For the first time, fear appeared beneath Anthony’s irritation.
“She practically raised me.”
That mattered.
Luca had expected defensiveness.
Not grief.
Anthony pulled something from his pocket.
A rosary.
Old wood beads.
A silver crucifix worn almost smooth.
“Aunt Isabella gave me this after my mother died.”
Emily’s head snapped up.
“Where did you get that?”
Anthony frowned.
“I just told you.”
“No.”
She moved closer.
“That medal.”
Attached behind the crucifix was a small oval medal stamped with the image of Saint Agnes.
Emily touched her own collar.
Then slowly pulled a thin chain from beneath her uniform.
An identical medal hung against her chest.
Nobody spoke.
“My father gave me this when I was sixteen,” Emily said.
Anthony stared at it.
“He said it belonged to Sarah.”
Luca looked from one medal to the other.
Anthony’s color changed.
“Isabella gave me mine fifteen years ago.”
“The year of the fire,” Luca said.
Anthony turned toward him.
“Yes.”
Daniel interrupted.
“We should move.”
Luca nodded.
“No convoy. Two cars. Daniel drives the second.”
Anthony said, “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Luca—”
“You stay here.”
Anthony’s face hardened.
“Why?”
“Because someone inside this house is controlling cameras.”
“You think that someone is me.”
“I think someone wants me to think it is.”
That silenced him.
Luca handed Anthony the eighth photograph.
Anthony read the message.
Then looked at Emily.
“If they wanted her to find the phone, she isn’t the witness.”
Emily’s stomach dropped.
“She’s bait,” Anthony finished.
Luca had reached the same conclusion.
But bait for whom?
Twenty minutes later, they were driving through cold November rain toward St. Agnes.
Emily sat beside Luca in the rear seat.
She had barely spoken.
“You don’t have to go inside,” Luca said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”
She turned toward him.
“Someone used Sarah’s voice.”
“That’s exactly why you stay in the car.”
“She was seven.”
“I heard her.”
“She used to sleep with a stuffed rabbit because she was scared of thunder.”
Luca said nothing.
“She hated milk. She called spaghetti ‘sketti.’ She followed me everywhere.”
Her voice broke.
“I spent fifteen years believing I could have saved her if I hadn’t stayed home sick that night.”
Luca looked at her.
“You were sixteen.”
“I was supposed to babysit her.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible.”
Emily laughed once without humor.
“You don’t know my family.”
“No.”
He looked through the rain.
“But I know guilt when someone has trained themselves to carry too much of it.”
Emily studied him.
Before she could answer, the school emerged through the trees.
Three stories of dark brick.
Broken windows.
A stone statue of Saint Agnes stood near the front steps.
Someone had draped a blue coat over its shoulders.
Emily stopped breathing.
“The coat.”
Daniel reached beneath his jacket.
Luca stopped him.
“Wait.”
The school’s front door stood open.
Inside, a single lamp burned.
Luca used the brass key.
It fit the interior chapel door.
That meant whoever had left it knew exactly where they were supposed to go.
They entered.
Dust covered the pews.
A wooden crucifix hung crooked above the altar.
And sitting in the first row—
was Isabella Romano.
Alive.
Emily gasped.
Luca crossed the chapel in seconds.
“Mom.”
Isabella looked up.
Her wrists weren’t tied.
She wasn’t injured.
She wasn’t even frightened.
“Luca.”
He stopped.
“You came here willingly.”
Isabella looked toward Emily.
“I had to.”
Luca’s relief turned instantly to anger.
“You let me believe you were kidnapped.”
“I was taken from the house.”
“By whom?”
“Someone I once trusted.”
Emily stepped forward.
“Mrs. Romano, why was Sarah’s voice on that phone?”
Isabella’s eyes filled with something Emily didn’t expect.
Recognition.
“Because they finally found you.”
“Who?”
Isabella stood.
Her gaze dropped to Emily’s Saint Agnes medal.
Then she whispered, “Your father promised he’d keep you away from us.”
Emily froze.
“My father?”
Isabella walked toward her.
“You were never hired at the Romano estate by accident.”
Luca’s head turned.
“What does that mean?”
“I approved her application personally.”
Emily stared at her.
“But I’d never met you.”
“No.”
Isabella’s voice trembled.
“But I knew your name.”
She reached beneath her blouse and removed a small silver locket.
Inside was a faded photograph.
Two teenage girls stood in front of St. Agnes.
One was Isabella.
The other looked disturbingly like Emily.
Emily whispered, “Who is she?”
Isabella’s answer changed everything.
“Your mother.”
Emily backed away.
“My mother died when I was five.”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you have a picture of her?”
“Because Margaret Carter was my best friend.”
Luca stared at his mother.
“You never mentioned her.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Isabella looked toward the dark corridor behind the chapel.
“Because fifteen years ago, the fire here wasn’t meant to kill Sarah.”
Emily’s heartbeat thundered.
Isabella took her hand.
“It was meant to destroy what your mother hid inside this school before she died.”
“What did she hide?”
Isabella looked at Luca.
Then back at Emily.
“Proof that your father was framed for something the Romano family did.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Daniel spun.
No one was there.
But beneath the first pew sat a small red child’s shoe.
Emily recognized it immediately.
Sarah’s.
She bent down.
Inside the shoe was a folded piece of paper.
A child’s handwriting covered the front.
EMILY, I HID IT LIKE YOU TOLD ME.
Emily’s hands began shaking.
“I never told her to hide anything.”
Isabella’s face went pale.
Luca unfolded the paper.
On the other side was a drawing.
A little girl.
A blue coat.
Three adults standing beside a furnace.
And one name written beneath the tallest man.
May you like
ANTHONY.
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