Chapter 5 - The Voice from the Dark
I froze, the blood turning to ice in my veins as the distorted voice echoed around me.
"Who are you?" I demanded to the empty hallway, looking around frantically for a security camera.
"I'm the one who kept your brother's secrets," the voice replied, laced with a dark, mocking amusement.
I noticed a tiny black lens hidden inside the eye of a carved wooden owl sitting on a nearby console table.
"You're the man in the walls," I said, stepping closer to the steel door.
"What did you do to my nephew?"
The speaker crackled with a low, menacing laugh that made my stomach churn.
"Drew is a very stubborn boy, just like his father was."
"He wouldn't tell us where Aaron hid the documents, so we had to apply a little pressure."
My mind raced, trying to connect the missing pieces of this twisted puzzle.
Aaron had died in a tragic car accident three years ago, or at least, that was the official police report.
"What documents?" I asked, stalling for time while I examined the steel door's hinges.
"The documents that prove Reena has no legal right to that trust fund," the voice sneered.
"Aaron found out the truth about her right before his brakes mysteriously failed on the highway."
My breath hitched as the reality of my brother's murder finally hit me squarely in the chest.
Reena hadn't just been abusing my niece and nephew; she had killed my brother to get to his money.
I grabbed a heavy bronze vase from the hallway table and smashed it violently against the digital keypad.
The plastic casing shattered, exposing a mess of wires and a blinking green circuit board.
I ripped the wires out with my bare hands, hoping it would disengage the locking mechanism.
Instead, an ear-piercing alarm began to blare, and heavy metal shutters slammed down over every window in the house.
The front door locked with a loud, mechanical thud, plunging the hallway into near total darkness.
"You shouldn't have done that, Calder," the voice whispered through the speaker, no longer mocking, but deadly serious.
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"Now I have to come out there and deal with you myself."
I heard the heavy deadbolts inside the steel door begin to slide open one by one.
