Chapter 45: The Five Knocks

 

Odette watched Elara read the letter.

“Who brought this?” Elara asked.

“I never saw a face. A shoe beneath the door. Then footsteps.”

“The hospital has cameras.”

“Then you must hurry before someone decides the cameras are broken.”

Elara folded the paper without putting it in her pocket. The envelope carried the same gentle chamomile sweetness as Rhys's tea, but the bitter edge was missing. Someone wanted her to recognize it. That did not mean it came from Gabriel.

“Which bed?” she asked. “The one at Saint-Claire, or after the fire?”

Odette's breathing caught.

“I don't know.”

“You must have some idea.”

“I know that boy remembered things when they thought he was asleep.” Odette closed her eyes. “Lucille told me that much.”

The monitor quickened. Elara leaned forward, then stopped herself. She had already asked too much of this woman.

“Rest. I'm not leaving you alone again.”

Odette's fingers tightened around hers.

“Don't promise what you can't keep, ma petite.”

 

Rhys was waiting outside, his jacket folded over one arm.

Elara showed him the note.

He read it twice, his expression unchanged until he reached the final words.

“When I woke up,” he murmured.

“Does it mean anything?”

“After the fire, I woke in a white room. I remember the ceiling. And my grandfather telling me I was safe.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

Elara waited. She was learning that silence gave Rhys room to search without feeling examined.

He frowned.

“There was a sound.”

“What kind?”

“Three knocks. Then two.” He tapped the pattern against the chair beside him. “Someone did that every morning. I thought it was a nurse checking the door.”

“Could it have been another patient?”

“I don't know.”

Elara took his hand before he could apologize for not knowing.

“You don't owe anyone a perfect memory.”

He looked down at their joined fingers.

“Doesn't stop everyone from wanting one.”

 

Priya met them in the corridor with a new problem.

“Security says the envelope was delivered by a hospital volunteer,” she said. “They checked the visitor log. No volunteer was assigned to this floor.”

“Do you have footage?”

“Brandt is requesting it.”

Elara handed over the envelope by its edges.

“Please have it examined. I don't want it disappearing into another private investigation.”

Priya slipped it into a clean evidence sleeve.

Rhys's phone lit up with an incoming call.

Augustin Calloway.

For a heartbeat, none of them moved.

Rhys answered.

“Grandfather.”

“Your company is being eaten alive on television,” Augustin said. His voice was thin but unmistakably commanding. “Come home.”

“Did you authorize my treatment?”

Silence.

“Rhys, we will discuss this privately.”

“Did you?”

“I authorized what the physicians recommended.”

“And when they were warned to stop?”

Another silence, longer this time.

“Who told you about a warning?”

“Lucille Quinn.”

Elara watched Rhys's face as the name crossed the line.

Augustin drew a breath.

“Then you have found more than I hoped you would.”

The call ended.

Rhys stared at the screen.

“He knows.”

“Yes,” Elara said. “But he didn't say what he knows.”

A year ago, she would have mistaken that answer for hesitation. Now she knew the difference between holding a thought and swallowing it.

“We go to him,” Rhys said.

“Not while Odette's shooter is free.”

His mouth tightened, but he nodded.

 

Brandt returned an hour later with footage from the hospital corridor. A person in pale volunteer scrubs approached Odette's door at 1:14 a.m. Their face was concealed by a mask and a low cap.

The person slid an envelope beneath the door.

Then they paused.

Three knocks.

Two.

Rhys's hand closed around the edge of the table.

“Play that again.”

Brandt did.

Three knocks. Two.

Elara looked at Rhys. All the color had left his face.

“That isn't a nurse,” he said.

“How do you know?” Brandt asked.

“Because someone used to do it outside my room when I was a boy.”

“Can you identify them?”

Rhys shook his head. Then he took the wooden horse from his pocket, turned it over, and showed them five tiny dents along its base.

Three together.

Two apart.

“I made these because I was afraid I'd forget the pattern,” he said.

Elara's throat tightened.

“Forget whose pattern?”

Rhys raised his eyes to hers.

“Gabriel's.”

Brandt's phone buzzed. He read the message and stiffened.

“The volunteer uniform was found in the laundry chute. There's blood on the cuff.”

“Whose blood?” Elara asked.

“They're testing it.” Brandt turned his screen around. “But the camera caught the person leaving without the cap.”

On the screen, a familiar face emerged from beneath the volunteer's cap.

Rhys stared in disbelief.

The man was his cousin, Theo Calloway.