Chapter 8 - The Empty Room
Harper’s feet moved before her brain could catch up. She surged past Roman on the stairs, her boots clattering wildly against the rotting wooden steps.
“Harper, wait!” Roman hissed, lunging forward to grab her arm, but she broke free with desperate strength.
She reached the top landing, threw herself against the scarred wooden door of Room 4B, and shoved it open with a violent crash.
The beam of her own panic swept across the room.
It was a small, square space, lit entirely by a single industrial work lamp sitting on a metal folding table in the center. Dust motes danced lazily in the harsh light. Against the far wall sat a simple cot, unmade, with a worn gray blanket. On the table rested a portable battery-operated metronome, its mechanical arm swinging back and forth with a steady, maddening tick—*tap, tap, tap*—simulating the sound of human knuckles.
There was no one there.
Harper stumbled into the center of the room, her eyes darting wildly to the corners, the empty closet, the grimy window looking out over the alley.
“No,” she whispered, her hands dropping to her sides as the terrible realization washed over her. “No, no, no. It was a trick. It was a sick, twisted trick.”
Roman stepped into the room a second later, his gun still raised, sweeping the corners before lowering it slowly as he assessed the empty space. His dark eyes took in the metronome, the cot, and finally, a white envelope resting squarely in the center of the metal table.
“It wasn't a trick,” Roman said quietly, walking over to the table without touching anything else. “It was a message. Look at the envelope.”
Harper forced her trembling legs to carry her forward. Written across the front of the heavy cardstock in neat, block letters was a single name: HARPER HAYES.
With shaking fingers, Harper reached out, tore the flap open, and pulled out a single sheet of heavy paper.
Inside was not a letter. It was a photograph.
It was a polaroid, fresh enough that the glossy surface still glistened slightly under the work lamp. It showed a hospital room, sterile and white. In the bed sat a young man with dark hair, thin and pale, staring directly into the camera lens with wide, terrified eyes.
Beside him, standing with his hand resting heavily on the boy’s shoulder, was a man in a crisp, expensive charcoal suit.
Arthur Vance.
Harper’s breath hitched so violently she staggered backward, catching herself against the edge of the metal table.
“My father,” Roman said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, glacial whisper as he looked over her shoulder at the photograph. “Or rather... my father’s primary real estate attorney, standing in a private medical ward that officially didn't exist three years ago.”
Harper looked up at Roman, tears blurring her vision for the first time all night. “Leo... my brother didn't die of the infection at St. Jude’s. They faked his death.”
“They didn't just fake his death,” Roman corrected, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. “They used him. Arthur Vance needed leverage against anyone who could trace his municipal shell companies. And your brother... your brother had a brilliant mind for numbers before he lost his hearing. He was auditing accounts he shouldn't have been looking at.”
Before Harper could process the horrifying scale of the conspiracy, a sudden, metallic clack echoed from the hallway outside the open door.
Roman spun around instantly, raising his weapon toward the threshold.
Click.
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The sound of a heavy padlock slamming shut from the outside of the apartment door rattled through the silence.
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