not waking up, but thrashing in the terrifying throes of a deep, medically induced paralysis—the exact same twitching and trembling I had dismissed as routine night terrors for months.
And then, Evan did something that made my blood freeze so hard I thought my heart would shatter inside my chest.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, heavy iron skeleton key—an antique key that looked identical to the ones belonging to the old Victorian houses down by the waterfront—and pressed the cold metal directly against the palm of Emma’s hand, forcing her small fingers to curl tightly around it.
He whispered one final sentence directly into her hair, a sentence so clear on the recording’s audio track that it echoed in my bedroom through my phone’s tiny speaker:
“Tell me where she buried the box, Emma. Tell your Uncle Evan where your sister is
