Chapter 67: The Third Witness

 

Gabriel stood in the doorway, his face drained of color.

“That wasn't Conrad,” he repeated. “That was my father.”

Rhys turned toward him. “You heard Marcus too?”

“I heard him every night when I was little. I know the way he swallowed the end of a sentence.” Gabriel's voice broke. “Why would he say that?”

No one answered.

Brandt stopped the recording before Rhys could ask for it again.

“The tape has been spliced,” he said. “We cannot assume that sentence followed the whisper, or even that it was recorded in the same year.”

Gabriel stared at the speaker. “But it's his voice.”

“That's something we can investigate.”

Elara saw Rhys grip the edge of the table. He had spent the day learning his father might have ordered him to forget. Now the same man seemed to be threatening another child.

“Which child?” Rhys asked.

Brandt shook his head. “The recording doesn't tell us.”

“Then why does it sound as though he was choosing someone?” Rhys said.

“Because that's what the words suggest,” Elara answered. “But we don't know what came before them.”

 

They found Sylvie in the guarded ward, sitting upright with both hands around a sealed bottle of water.

Gabriel did not sit beside her.

“Did Father ever threaten Rhys?” he asked.

Sylvie looked at Elara, then at Brandt. “What have you heard?”

“A recording,” Gabriel said. “He said they'd use the other child.”

Sylvie's bottle slipped from her hands. It rolled across the floor and struck the bed frame.

“Who told you it was Marcus?” she whispered.

“We recognized his voice.”

Sylvie pressed her palms against her eyes.

“I begged him not to go back to Saint-Claire,” she said. “He said there were documents showing what Vale had done to both of you.”

“Was he helping Conrad?” Rhys demanded.

“I don't know. Marcus stopped telling me things when he thought I might be forced to repeat them.”

Gabriel drew a sharp breath. “You told me he was dead.”

“I was told he was.”

Elara noticed the difference. Sylvie had not said she believed it.

“Did you see him after the boat disappeared?” she asked.

Sylvie lowered her hands. For a long moment she studied the floor.

“Once,” she said.

Rhys went rigid.

“When?”

“A week afterward. I woke to knocking at my kitchen window. Three times. Then two.” Tears slipped down her face. “Marcus stood outside in a coat that wasn't his. He said he couldn't come in.”

Gabriel backed toward the door.

“You knew,” he whispered.

“He made me promise I would tell no one. He said if Conrad learned he'd visited, both boys would be taken.”

“You let us bury him.”

Sylvie flinched. “I thought I was keeping you alive.”

“Did he ask about me?” Rhys said, his voice almost lost beneath the monitor's beeping.

Sylvie nodded. “That night. He asked whether the headaches had stopped, whether you still drank the tea. I told him I didn't know.”

Rhys looked away, and Elara could not tell whether the answer comforted him or made the absence crueler.

Gabriel left without looking back.

 

Rhys followed his brother only as far as the corridor. Gabriel stood beside the emergency exit, shaking.

“Please don't tell me you understand her,” Gabriel said.

“I don't.”

“She knew he was alive.”

“For one night,” Rhys said. “We still don't know what happened afterward.”

Gabriel laughed bitterly. “You're already trying to rescue him.”

“No.” Rhys took a breath. “I'm trying not to bury him twice before I know whether he's dead.”

The brothers stood a few feet apart. Elara remained near the nurses' station, close enough to help and far enough not to intrude.

Rhys lowered himself onto the bench beside the exit, leaving the other end empty. He didn't ask Gabriel to sit. After a while, Gabriel did anyway.

At last Gabriel said, “I wanted him to come back for us.”

“So did I.”

It was not forgiveness. But Gabriel stopped edging toward the exit.

 

Later, Elara found Rhys alone beside the stairwell window.

“Are you angry with me?” he asked.

“Why would I be?”

“Because every answer about my family leads back to your mother's death.”

She considered him carefully. “I'm angry at people who made children carry adult secrets. That includes the people who hurt you.”

He reached for her hand. “You make it difficult to keep my distance.”

“Good.”

He almost smiled. Then her phone vibrated.

Brandt had sent a message: the forensic team had isolated a second voice beneath the final line, so faint it had been dismissed as tape hiss.

Elara played the cleaned recording.

A man said, Then we'll use the other child.

And a woman answered, barely audible:

“No. Elara is only five.”