## CHAPTER 19 — THE WOMAN UNDER THE WATER
The message repeated every thirty seconds.
Come to the lake.
Come to the lake.
Come to the lake.
Hale traced the signal to the old Mercer boathouse.
By the time they arrived, the structure was burning.
Logan ran toward it despite the flames.
Inside, someone had tied Elena to a chair near the water.
He reached her just before part of the roof collapsed.
Together, they stumbled outside.
“Where is Evelyn?” Logan asked.
“She left.”
“Was Claire with her?”
Elena coughed through the smoke.
“No.”
“What did Evelyn want?”
“She wanted the key.”
“What key?”
“The one Claire mailed me.”
“You used it on the music box.”
“That wasn’t its real purpose.”
Elena reached inside her burned coat.
The silver key was gone.
Evelyn had taken it.
The fire department contained the flames.
Divers searched beneath the boathouse after Hale found drag marks leading to the lake.
They discovered a submerged vehicle.
Claire’s vehicle.
The car involved in the crash six years earlier had not been the original.
Someone had switched it.
Inside the submerged vehicle was an old suitcase filled with medical records.
The files documented Logan’s treatment after the lake-house incident.
Edmund had ordered memory suppression.
But another physician had objected.
Dr. Rafael Marquez.
Elena’s father.
He had founded Facility Seven as a trauma-treatment center.
Edmund later transformed it into a private research program.
Rafael tried to expose him.
He died in the east-wing fire seventeen years ago.
The maintenance worker supposedly killed in that fire had never existed.
The victim had been Rafael Marquez.
Elena sat beside the lake, staring at the report.
“My mother told me he abandoned us.”
“Maybe she was protecting you,” Logan said.
Elena looked toward the water.
“Claire knew.”
“She tried to tell us both.”
A diver surfaced holding a waterproof container.
Inside was a second memory card.
The card contained one video.
Claire stood in front of the camera inside Facility Seven.
She looked weak but conscious.
“If Logan finds this,” she said, “tell him Noah was never the first child in the program.”
Behind Claire, a small girl appeared briefly in the doorway.
She looked directly at the camera.
Noah entered the room while the video was playing.
He pointed at the girl.
“That’s Lily.”
Logan turned.
“How do you know her?”
Noah’s answer silenced everyone.
May you like
“She lives under our house.”
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