Chapter 9 - Room Twelve
The motel had changed owners twice in four years.
Room 12 had been remodeled.
New floors.
New furniture.
Fresh paint.
I thought whatever Laura had hidden was gone.
Then the owner showed Ruiz an old maintenance photograph.
The room once had a hollow section behind the bathroom mirror.
We removed the new mirror carefully.
Nothing.
Then Owen’s Bluebird Game came back to me.
I searched the wall.
Near the bottom corner, beneath layers of paint, was a tiny carving.
A bird.
My knees nearly gave out.
Ruiz removed the panel.
Inside was a plastic bag.
A cheap prepaid phone sat inside.
The battery was dead.
Forensics recovered the data.
There were photographs from the night of the crash.
Laura had taken them herself.
One showed blood on her forehead.
Another showed the lodge.
Another showed Grant asleep in a chair outside a locked bedroom.
Then came a video.
Laura’s face filled the screen.
She looked exhausted.
Terrified.
But alive.
“Daniel, if you find this, I survived the crash.”
I covered my mouth.
“I was forced off the road.
Grant pulled me out before the car caught fire.
At first I thought he saved me.”
She looked toward the motel window.
“But he took my phone.
He took my keys.
Then Peter arrived.”
She swallowed.
“Peter says if I expose the accounts, he’ll make sure you go to prison for everything they stole under your name.”
My hands began shaking.
Laura continued.
“Natalie helped me escape tonight.
I don’t know if I can trust her.
She says she’s afraid.”
Laura looked directly into the camera.
“If I can get to the police, this ends.”
The video stopped.
The next file began automatically.
It was only audio.
A door slammed.
Laura gasped.
Then a man spoke.
Peter.
“You really thought we wouldn’t find you?”
The recording ended.
Ruiz looked at me.
“We have enough to reopen your wife’s death as a homicide investigation.”
I stared at Laura’s frozen face on the screen.
For four years, I had mourned an accident.
Now I knew something worse.
My wife had survived.
May you like
She had fought to get home.
And someone had stopped her.
