Chapter 4 - The Secret Beneath the Floorboards
The front door locked with a heavy, final click.
For twenty minutes, I didn’t move. I stood frozen in the center of the kitchen, staring at the spot where Evan had stood, my mind racing through a labyrinth of unimaginable panic. My daughter was upstairs, sleeping peacefully—or rather, chemically subdued—while everything I thought I knew about my life, my marriage, and my child shattered into dust.
Think, Carrie, think, I told myself, pressing the heels of my hands against my burning temples.
If Evan was telling even a shred of truth—if David’s family really carried some dark, degenerative medical secret—then calling the police blindly might backfire. If the authorities got involved and ordered a standard tox-screen without understanding the neurological context, Emma could end up trapped in a state-run psychiatric ward or a foster holding facility while doctors ran endless, agonizing tests.
I needed proof. Real proof. Not just a hidden camera video of a nighttime drugging, but documentation. Medical files. Lab notes.
Evan had lived in this house for three years. He worked from a home office down the hall—a room he kept locked with a heavy deadbolt and a keypad lock, a room he always claimed held confidential consulting work for biotech firms.
Consulting work. Right.
I hurried out of the kitchen, my footsteps echoing loudly in the suddenly cavernous house. Upstairs, the hallway was quiet. I gently pushed open Emma’s bedroom door. She was still fast asleep, her breathing slow and regular. I pressed my fingers against her warm forehead, whispering a silent, frantic prayer of apology before slipping back out.
I walked straight to Evan’s office door at the end of the hall.
The keypad glowed with a faint, soft blue light. I tried my birthday. Nothing. I tried our anniversary. Nothing. I tried Emma’s birthday. The keypad buzzed with a harsh, red flash of rejection.
Think like a scientist, I told myself. A man like Evan doesn’t use sentimental numbers. He uses patterns.
I remembered the silver tin he had pulled from his pocket. I remembered the dropper bottle. I scanned the keypad and typed in the numbers corresponding to the chemical element symbols on the periodic table often associated with neurological stabilizers—or perhaps something simpler: the date his father’s clinic was founded.
1984.
A soft, green chime echoed down the hallway. The deadbolt clicked open.
My heart hammering against my ribs, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Evan’s office didn’t look like a standard corporate consultant’s den. It looked like a cross between a high-end forensic lab and an obsessive archive. The walls were lined with dark mahogany bookshelves packed with heavy medical journals on pediatric neuro-genetics, degenerative cognitive disorders, and historical case studies dating back decades.
On the large oak desk sat two monitors, currently in sleep mode, flanked by a complex array of filing cabinets.
I didn’t turn on the overhead lights. I used the flashlight on my phone, keeping the beam tight and low as I tore through the desk drawers. Pens, paper clips, charging cables—nothing.
Then I noticed the bottom drawer. It was heavier than the others. I pulled it open and found it empty at first, but when I ran my fingers along the back wooden panel, a hidden latch gave way with a muffled pop.
The back wall of the drawer slid forward, revealing a shallow, secret compartment beneath the desk.
Inside lay a thick, leather-bound ledger, a stack of medical charts bearing the official letterhead of the Cascadia Neurological Institute, and a series of Polaroid photographs.
My hands shook so violently I almost dropped my phone as I picked up the top photo.
May you like
It was a picture of Emma. But she wasn't seven years old. She was an infant, no more than six months old, lying in a hospital crib with electrodes taped to her tiny skull. Standing beside the crib, wearing a white lab coat and looking directly into the camera lens with a cold, triumphant smile, was a much younger Evan Brooks.
And standing in the background, half-hidden in the shadows of the hospital doorway, was my ex-husband, David.
