CHAPTER 10 THE CHOICE IN THE DARK
Claire stood between the tunnels.
Nathaniel’s voice came from the left.
Noah’s from the right.
Every instinct told her to run toward her son.
Every lesson Project Lighthouse had taught her warned that voices could be recorded, copied, and manipulated.
She closed her eyes.
“Noah,” she called. “What did you say to me the first night you slept at Open Door House?”
Silence.
Then the voice on the right answered.
“I said the rooms were too quiet.”
Wrong.
Noah had said the rooms sounded different because no one was crying behind the walls.
Claire turned left.
“Nathaniel, what was inside the box you gave me?”
“The broken master key.”
Correct.
But anyone who knew the public history of Open Door House could know that.
She reached into her pocket and activated the emergency alarm on her phone.
A high-frequency pulse traveled through the tunnels.
Both voices stopped.
Rosa arrived with flashlights.
“They were recordings.”
They moved deeper into the passage.
The tunnel ended at a hidden vehicle platform built inside the cliff. Rusted rails led toward an underground opening near the ocean.
An empty transport car remained on the track.
Blood marked the seat.
Nathaniel’s blood type, according to a rapid field test.
Noah’s wooden boat rested beside it.
Claire lifted the boat.
A new message had been carved into the hull.
SEATTLE
The tactical team entered the abandoned ferry terminal thirty minutes later.
They found Ava locked inside a maintenance office.
She was alive.
Samuel Hart was gone.
Ava told investigators that Samuel had left after receiving a phone call.
“What did he say?” Claire asked through the secure video connection.
“He said, ‘The father took the boy.’”
Claire looked toward the bloodstained transport car.
“Did he mean Nathaniel?”
Ava shook her head.
“He said Nathaniel wasn’t the father.”
By sunrise, the story had reached the press.
Someone leaked the forged financial transfers, Nathaniel’s behavioral reassignment report, and the document claiming his marriage to Claire had been arranged.
News networks described Open Door House as an extension of the same system it claimed to oppose.
Former executives demanded that Nathaniel be arrested.
Victims questioned whether their compensation accounts were safe.
The board suspended Nathaniel from every remaining advisory role, even though he was missing.
Claire supported the decision.
She would not protect him from scrutiny simply because she loved him.
But she also refused to declare him guilty without evidence.
At noon, a reporter asked whether she still trusted her husband.
Claire stood outside the estate before dozens of cameras.
“Trust is not blindness,” she said. “I will follow the evidence even if it leads to someone I love. I expect every institution to do the same.”
“Do you believe Nathaniel kidnapped your son?”
“I believe both of them are missing.”
“Do you believe your marriage was manufactured by Project Harbor?”
“I believe someone wanted us to find that document.”
“Why?”
“That is what I intend to learn.”
Inside, Rosa traced the underground rail route.
It ran beneath the cliffs and ended near a sea cave inaccessible during high tide.
Search teams found Nathaniel there shortly before sunset.
He was unconscious.
His left shoulder had been cut.
Noah was not with him.
When Nathaniel woke in the hospital, Claire stood beside the bed.
“Where is our son?”
Nathaniel looked disoriented.
“I followed him into the west hall.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
“Your father is dead.”
“I know.”
“What happened in the tunnel?”
“He told Noah to come willingly.”
“Why would Noah do that?”
Nathaniel looked at her.
“Because the man showed him a video of you giving birth.”
Claire’s pulse quickened.
“What was in the video?”
May you like
Nathaniel’s eyes filled with horror.
“You gave birth to twins.”
