Chapter 4 - Midnight in PortlandThe rain hammered against the windshield of Daniel’s pickup truck as they tore down Interstate 5, cutting through the dark Oregon night. Inside the cab, the atmosphere was thick with a mixture of grief, anticipation, and unresolved history.
"She loved you, you know," Claire broke the silence as Portland's skyline flickered in the distance.
Daniel kept his eyes fixed on the wet asphalt. "Who? Hannah?"
"Laura," Claire corrected softly. "She loved you enough to build a completely new life, to hide her brilliance, to pretend she didn't know how to code circles around the best engineers in the country. That takes an unimaginable amount of strength."
"She was always looking over her shoulder," Daniel murmured, his voice thick. "Even when we laughed, even when we held Emily for the first time in the hospital... there was a shadow in her eyes. I thought it was just a hard childhood. I never knew..." He swallowed hard. "I never knew she was running from a ghost named Claire Whitmore."
"She wasn't running from me, Daniel," Claire said, her voice breaking slightly. "She was running from Arthur Sterling."
They pulled up to a modest, craftsman-style home in a quiet Portland suburb by 1:30 AM. The house was dark, untouched, preserved exactly as Hannah had left it six years ago.
Emily unlocked the front door, the familiar scent of lavender and old paper washing over them. She led them straight up the creaking wooden stairs to the attic.
After pushing aside old boxes of holiday decorations and winter coats, Emily hauled a heavy, fireproof metal safe out from beneath floorboards.
"The combination," Emily whispered, her hands shaking. "She told me it was the date she started her real life."
Claire stepped closer, her breath catching. "Try October 14th."
Emily stared at her. "How did you—?"
"That was the day our prototype first compiled without an error," Claire whispered. "The day we thought we were going to change the world."
May you like
Emily dialed the numbers. Click.
The heavy steel door swung open.
