Chapter 4: The Man Who Owned Her Silence
The phone stopped ringing after the seventh buzz.
We both stared at it like it might do something else.
"Does he have that number?" I asked.
"No one has that number," Clara said.
"I bought it three weeks ago.
Cash.
I haven't called anyone on it except the dental clinic."
"The dental clinic called me."
She looked up.
"They had your number as the emergency contact," I said.
"Which means it was on a form.
Which means—"
"Which means someone could have seen the form." Clara was already on her feet.
"We need to go."
"Go where?
Clara, you just got here.
You just sat down.
You can't keep running every time—"
"You don't understand what he's capable of." She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair.
"You've never seen him angry.
You've never had him look at you and explain, very calmly, exactly what he's going to do and to who."
"To whom," I said, and immediately felt insane for saying it.
Clara almost smiled.
For half a second she looked exactly like she had at twenty-three.
Then the buzzing started again.
Same unknown number.
I picked it up before she could stop me.
"Hello."
A pause.
Then a man's voice — smooth, unhurried, the kind of voice that had never needed to raise itself to get what it wanted.
"You must be Sarah," he said.
"Clara's told me so much about you.
Well.
She didn't tell me.
But I've always made it my business to know."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Who is this?"
"I think you already know." Another pause.
"Tell her I'm not angry.
Tell her I just want to talk.
We have some unfinished business, Clara and I, and it's been long enough."
"There's no one here by that name."
He laughed.
It was a quiet, patient sound.
"Sarah.
I watched you both walk out of that clinic.
I watched you take the long way home — smart, by the way, but not quite long enough." The line was silent for a moment.
"Put her on."
Clara was already watching my face.
She'd read everything she needed to from it.
She held out her hand for the phone.
"Don't," I said.
"Give it to me."
I gave it to her.
She held it to her ear and didn't say anything for a long moment.
Then: "What do you want, Daniel."
Not a question.
A statement.
The voice of someone who had asked it before and never liked the answer.
I could hear his voice from where I stood but not the words.
Clara listened.
Her expression didn't change, but her free hand found the back of the chair and gripped it.
"No," she said finally.
"That's not going to happen."
His voice again.
Longer this time.
"Then do it," Clara said.
"Go ahead.
Do everything you said you'd do." A pause.
"Because I'm done.
I'm done running.
And if you come near my sister, I will walk into the nearest police station and tell them every single thing I know about you.
Not just about me.
About the others."
The voice on the other end stopped.
Clara's grip on the chair loosened slightly.
"That's what I thought," she said, and ended the call.
The room was very still.
I looked at my sister.
She set the phone on the table and pressed both palms flat against the surface and breathed.
"The others," I said.
"What others?"
She straightened up slowly.
"I wasn't the first person Daniel Marsh convinced to disappear, Sarah.
I found that out about three years in." She turned to face me.
"There was a woman before me.
Her name was Renata.
She was g*ne for six years before I even knew she existed."
"Gone like you were gone?"
"Gone differently." Clara's voice was very even.
"She didn't make it out."
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
"Clara," I said carefully.
"How much do you actually know about what he's done?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Enough," she said.
"Enough that he can't afford to let me walk into a police station."
"Then why hasn't he stopped you before now?"
She picked the phone back up and looked at the screen.
The unknown number hadn't called again.
"Because until today," she said, "he didn't know I was ready to."
She set the phone face-down on the table.
"I need to tell you something else," she said.
"Something I should have told you the moment you walked into that clinic."
I waited.
May you like
"The crash ten years ago," she said.
"Daniel didn't just happen to be on that road."
