Chapter 2: The Name She Told Me Never to Say
I sat in that car for thirty seconds without moving.
The man standing at that steel door was older.
Thinner.
But it was him.
I had seen his face in enough photographs to be certain.
Jessi's brother.
Daniel.
The one she told me had d*ed in a car accident before we met.
The one whose funeral she said she never attended because she "couldn't face it." The one whose name made her go quiet every time it came up.
He was standing twenty feet away, holding the door open for my daughter like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Fiona walked straight to him and hugged him.
She knew him.
She had done this before.
Wendy turned and scanned the street.
I sank lower in the seat.
When I looked again, all three of them were inside.
The steel door closed.
I called Jessi immediately.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Hey, are you boarding?"
"I didn't go," I said.
"Jessi, who is Daniel?"
Three full seconds of silence.
"What?"
"Daniel.
Your brother.
The one you told me d*ed."
Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"I'm looking at a building in an industrial lot off Route 1.
Wendy just walked our daughter inside to meet him."
The silence that followed was different.
It wasn't confusion.
It was the sound of someone realizing they had run out of time.
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What Jessi said next — and what was really happening inside that building — is more disturbing than anything you're imagining.
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