Chapter 10 - THE HOUSE UNDER THE LAKE
The boathouse door was locked from the outside.
Luka broke the window beside it with a fire extinguisher.
Glass rained across the dock.
He reached through, released the latch, and opened the door.
No one waited outside.
The parking area was empty except for our vehicles.
Whoever had taken Sophie had already left.
That meant the kidnapping had never been about keeping her.
It had been about moving all of us to one place.
The projector still glowed against the wall.
Ethan stared at the footage of himself in Mercer's room.
"It is edited."
I held Sophie so tightly Ana touched my arm.
"Let her breathe, Claire."
I loosened my grip by an inch.
"What is edited?"
Ethan pointed at the screen.
"The audio."
"You were there."
"Yes."
"You threatened him."
"No."
"We heard you."
"You heard six seconds."
Luka walked to the projector and unplugged it.
"Then give us the other six minutes."
Ethan looked at him.
"Mercer called me."
"Three months ago, after my mother showed me the paternity exclusion."
"He said if I wanted to know the truth, I had to meet him alone."
I laughed bitterly.
"Apparently every man in this story loves that sentence."
Ethan ignored it.
"Mercer told me Andrew hid proof that could destroy my family."
"I asked where."
"He refused."
"I got angry."
"And the lighter?" Luka asked.
Ethan looked ashamed.
"I picked it up from his table."
"I told him I could burn whatever he gave me."
"That was the threat."
"Not that I would hurt him."
I stared at him.
"You understand that is not much better."
"I know."
Again with those two words.
I was beginning to hate them more than apologies.
Luka looked at the black wall where the message had been.
"Whoever staged this wanted Claire to believe Ethan was involved in her father's death."
"Why?" Ana asked.
"To split us further," Ethan said.
Luka gave him a flat look.
"You accomplished most of that without help."
Ethan looked away.
I examined Sophie beneath the boathouse light.
Her diaper was clean.
Her blanket was warm.
A tiny adhesive sensor had been placed on her ankle.
Ana peeled it off.
"Tracker."
Luka took it.
"Not anymore."
He dropped it into a bucket of lake water.
A folded note was tucked beneath Sophie's carrier pad.
I recognized my father's handwriting.
My breath caught.
"This is his."
The note contained coordinates.
No explanation.
Only one sentence.
THE HOUSE IS NOT ON THE SHORE.
Luka read it twice.
"There used to be cabins here before the reservoir expanded."
Ethan frowned.
"My family owned most of this land."
"Of course they did," Ana muttered.
Luka opened a map on his phone.
The coordinates pointed into the lake.
Ethan stared.
"That cannot be right."
I remembered something my father once told me when I was a child.
We had driven past this reservoir on the way to a science museum.
He pointed at the water and said there were streets under it.
Houses too.
A whole neighborhood flooded when the dam was built.
"There is a house under the lake."
Luka looked at me.
"Your father knew about it?"
"He told me once."
"I thought he was telling a ghost story."
Ethan went to a cabinet and found old marina charts.
The coordinates aligned with a former Vale hunting cabin built on a stone rise.
When the reservoir flooded, the first floor went underwater.
The attic remained inside a sealed concrete maintenance structure accessible through a service tunnel from the old boathouse.
"My grandfather used it for storage," Ethan said.
"After the flood, everyone forgot about it."
Luka looked at him.
"Andrew did not."
We found the tunnel entrance beneath a removable floor panel.
Ana refused to let me go down.
For once, I agreed.
I had lost enough blood that the edges of my vision were beginning to sparkle.
She made me lie on an old sofa with Sophie against my chest while Luka and Ethan went into the tunnel.
"If either one tries anything, come back alone," I told Luka.
Ethan looked wounded.
I did not apologize.
They were gone twenty-three minutes.
Every minute felt like an hour.
Then Luka returned carrying a waterproof metal case.
Ethan followed with ash smeared across one sleeve.
"What happened?"
"Someone tried to burn the storage room years ago," Luka said.
"The case survived."
The brass M-17 key opened it.
Inside were old neonatal blood cards sealed in plastic.
Two cassette tapes.
A stack of photographs.
And a small video camera wrapped in a towel.
My father's handwriting labeled the first tape.
NOVEMBER 17 - ORIGINAL STATEMENT.
The second read.
IF I DIE, PLAY THIS FOR CLAIRE.
My hands shook.
"We need a cassette player."
Ethan opened a cabinet in the boathouse.
An old marine stereo had a tape deck.
The second tape clicked into place.
Static filled the room.
Then my father's voice.
"Claire, I hope you never hear this."
I closed my eyes.
"If you do, then I was right to be afraid."
A long pause followed.
"I discovered the M-17 substitution during a blood-card audit in 2013."
"The Moretti infant and the Vale infant were switched after an unauthorized neonatal procedure."
"The switch was never corrected."
"The child raised as Ethan Vale is biologically Marco and Elena Moretti's son."
Ethan sat down hard.
I looked at him.
He covered his face with both hands.
My father's voice continued.
"The child raised as Luka Moretti is biologically Charles and Margaret Vale's son."
Luka stood like stone.
"I confirmed both relationships using preserved newborn blood cards and independent samples."
"I created three sealed DNA reports."
"One went to Joseph Mercer."
"One went to Charles Vale."
"One remains hidden with the original cards."
I looked inside the metal case.
There was no envelope.
Only cards.
My father continued.
"If the report is missing, the blood cards can reproduce it."
Luka picked up one sealed card.
VALE MALE - 11/17/93.
Ethan picked up another.
MORETTI MALE - 11/17/93.
His hands trembled.
"Which one is me?"
Luka looked at him.
"That is what the test decides."
My father's recording went on.
"Charles refused to correct the identities."
"Margaret threatened Claire if I went public."
My heart stopped.
Ethan lowered his hands.
"She threatened you?"
The tape answered.
"She knew Claire was seventeen and preparing to leave for college."
"She gave me photographs of Claire walking to school."
"She told me accidents happen to young women too."
Rage shook me so hard Sophie stirred.
Luka's face became frighteningly calm.
"Andrew agreed to wait," the tape continued.
"But I did not stop collecting evidence."
"Charles agreed to meet me one final time."
"He said he wanted to confess."
"I met him at St. Catherine six days before my death."
The security footage.
Now it made sense.
"Luka was there because Charles asked to see the son he had abandoned."
Luka closed his eyes.
"I did not know who he was," he whispered.
On the tape, my father said, "Charles never told Luka his name."
"He lost his nerve."
"He gave me one envelope and asked me to protect the boy who was given away."
Ethan and Luka looked at each other.
Which boy?
Both of them had been given away from the lives biology assigned them.
My father took a breath on the recording.
"The envelope contains the identity of the person Charles feared most."
The tape hissed.
Then he said the name.
But before we heard it, the boathouse exploded with a violent crack.
Flames burst from the wall beside the electrical panel.
Ana screamed.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
Luka grabbed the metal case.
Ethan ripped the cassette from the player.
I stood with Sophie.
Pain tore through me.
"Move!" Luka shouted.
We ran toward the broken door.
The dock outside was already burning.
Someone had poured fuel across the boards.
There was only one path left.
The lake.
Luka took Sophie from me with my permission and held her high against his chest.
Ethan and Ana supported me between them.
We stepped into freezing water and moved along the edge of the dock while fire climbed behind us.
My teeth chattered.
Smoke burned my lungs.
Then I saw a figure on the far shore.
A woman in a cream coat.
Celeste.
She watched the boathouse burn.
When she saw me looking at her, she raised one hand.
Not to wave.
To point behind me.
I turned.
Ethan was holding the cassette.
The plastic casing had cracked in the heat.
A strip of tape spilled from it into the water.
May you like
The last name my father had tried to give us was gone.
