Daniel noticed.
“Is that Mr. Walker?”
I nodded.
His expression remained calm.
“Ask him whether he sent an envelope.”
I lifted the phone.
“Ethan, did you send something to my hotel?”
“What hotel?”
The fear in his voice returned instantly.
I looked at Daniel.
“No.”
Daniel’s posture changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“Don’t open it yet,” he said.
Ethan heard him.
“Who is there?”
“Adrian’s security.”
“Elena, listen to me. Do not tell anyone what you found tonight.”
I almost laughed at the impossible timing.
“Someone just delivered something to me, Ethan.”
“What?”
“An envelope.”
“Don’t touch it.”
Daniel was already examining the outside.
“No return address,” he said.
My name was handwritten across the front.
ELENA WALKER
Nothing else.
Daniel took a photograph and stepped down the hall to make a call.
I remained behind the partially opened door.
“Ethan,” I whispered, “who knows I’m here?”
“I didn’t even know you were at a hotel.”
“Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rebecca?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know.”
Those three words again.
But this time they frightened both of us.
Daniel returned.
“It doesn’t appear mechanically unusual. We can open it downstairs if you’d prefer.”
I looked at the envelope.
Then at Lily.
Then at the emails glowing on my laptop screen.
Northbridge.
Caroline Prescott.
Samuel Baines.
Three years of secrets.
“I want to see it.”
Daniel hesitated.
Then carefully opened the envelope.
Inside was a single photograph.
He stared at it.
His expression changed.
“What?” I asked.
He did not answer immediately.
“Daniel.”
He turned the photograph toward me.
It had been taken years ago.
Adrian stood outside what looked like a hospital entrance.
He was younger.
Beside him was a woman I instantly knew had to be Caroline.
Same eyes.
Same dark hair.
She looked thin but cheerful, one hand lifted toward the camera.
There were two other people in the photograph.
One was Samuel Baines.
And the other—
My knees nearly gave way.
I grabbed the doorframe.
Because standing beside Adrian Prescott in a photograph taken almost three years before I met him was my husband.
Ethan.
I stared at the phone in my hand.
“Ethan?”
He did not answer.
“Why are you in a picture with Adrian?”
Nothing.
My pulse thundered.
“You told me you didn’t know him.”
Finally, Ethan spoke.
Very quietly.
“I told you I’d never met him.”
