The fluorescent lights of the ICU hummed, but the quiet inside my chest felt deafening. Detective Bennett leaned over my bed, her eyes sharp, cold, and calculated. On the crisp white blanket lay three glossy 8x10 photographs

The news broadcast echoed through the silent hospital room, but I couldn't hear the words anymore. My ears were ringing with a deafening buzz.

Jason was dead?

The man who locked me in a dark house without water, power, or pills was sitting at the bottom of the icy Atlantic Ocean? It felt too clean. Too easy. Justice delivered by an act of God before I could even draw breath to demand answers.

"Mrs. Vance..." Detective Bennett placed a hand on my trembling shoulder. "I am so sorry. We will verify the passenger manifest immediately."

"No," I whispered, staring at the screen. "Look at the graphics on the screen, Detective. Look at the timeline."

Bennett leaned closer to the TV.

The news anchor was reading off the flight details: Flight 409 departed Heathrow at 6:15 AM GMT. Radar contact was lost forty minutes into the flight.

"Jason's flight was scheduled for 2:00 PM," I said, my voice dangerously steady. "He sent me a text message from his layover in Frankfurt just four hours ago saying he was boarding a late-afternoon flight. He couldn't have been on Flight 409."

Bennett immediately pulled out her department phone and dialed her team. "Check the manifest for Flight 409! I want every name cross-referenced with Jason Vance's aliases and passport numbers NOW!"

Twenty minutes of excruciating silence passed before Bennett’s phone buzzed. She listened intently, her face turning from pale to ash-white.

"He wasn't on the plane," Bennett said, dropping her voice. "Jason Vance purchased a ticket for Flight 409, scanned his boarding pass at the gate, but never actually walked down the jet bridge. He staged his own death."

A chill ran down my spine. Staging his death meant he knew the cops were onto him. Or worse... it meant he was still in the city.

Suddenly, my personal cell phone—which the nurses had retrieved from my purse and placed on the bedside table—vibrated violently.

It was an unknown number.

Detective Bennett immediately tapped her team to trace the signal and gestured for me to put it on speakerphone.

I tapped the green button with a shaking finger. "Hello?"

Static hissed through the speaker, followed by the heavy, rhythmic sound of breathing.

"You were always harder to kill than you looked, Evelyn," a voice rasped.

It wasn't Jason.

It was Clara.

"Clara?" I breathed, my heart hammering against my chest. "Where is Jason? What did you two do to me?!"

Clara let out a harsh, bitter laugh that turned into a dry cough. "You think Jason is the mastermind here, Evie? Poor, dumb, greedy Jason? He’s just the bagman. He thought he was playing me, but I was playing him. But now... now he knows too much, and he’s running scared."

"Where are you?!" I demanded.

"Check the floor safe under your nightstand at home when the cops finish playing dress-up," Clara hissed. "Jason didn't lock those doors to keep you in, sister. He locked them to keep them out. If you want to survive the next forty-eight hours, you need to sign over the trust to the account in Geneva before midnight. Or the people Jason owes money to will make sure you end up at the bottom of the ocean, too."

Click.

The line went dead.

Detective Bennett stormed out of the room to mobilize a forensic team to my house. But as I sat alone in that sterile room, a terrifying detail hit me.

Clara said: Check the floor safe under your nightstand.

There was no floor safe under my nightstand. The only floor safe in our entire house was located beneath the loose floorboard in the master closet... a secret Jason and I had installed five years ago, right after Clara disappeared.