Chapter 15 - THE SEALED COFFIN
Before going to Saint Alden, police opened Ethan’s grave.
Rain covered the Caldwell cemetery.
Floodlights surrounded the family mausoleum.
Naomi stood beside Arthur as workers removed the sealed coffin.
Gideon’s signature remained on the original security tag.
The lock was cut.
The lid opened.
There was no body inside.
Only bags of construction sand.
For three years, Naomi and Lila had visited an empty coffin.
Naomi reached inside.
Her fingers touched metal.
Ethan’s wedding ring lay beneath the sand.
Inside it were the words Naomi had chosen fourteen years earlier.
STAY WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT.
The photograph from Room 814 showed Ethan wearing an identical ring.
One had to be a copy.
“The photograph may be staged,” Ortiz said.
“The voice was real.”
“A real voice does not prove a recent photograph.”
Arthur stared into the coffin.
“Gideon wants us chasing a living Ethan.”
“Because a dead Ethan cannot explain the evidence,” Naomi answered.
A cemetery worker found another object beneath the sand.
A hospital bracelet.
Ethan’s name was printed across it.
The admission location read SAINT ALDEN.
The discharge date was that morning.
The message beneath the menu board had been correct.
Ethan had been moved before police arrived.
Naomi examined the bracelet.
The plastic was wet.
Not from rain.
It smelled like lake water.
The underground chamber was accessible through a service tunnel beneath Saint Alden’s frozen lake.
Police changed their entry plan.
Before leaving, Arthur caught Naomi’s hand.
“If Ethan is alive, tell him I believed Gideon.”
“That will not comfort him.”
“No.”
Arthur’s voice broke.
“But it is the truth.”
Naomi looked at the empty coffin.
“The truth came three years late.”
At Saint Alden, tactical officers opened a red steel door.
Hospital beds stood in darkness.
One bed was warm.
A white shirt lay across it.
On the wall, Ethan had scratched hundreds of dates.
The newest mark was made that morning.
A hidden elevator led beneath the lake.
Its doors required a voice phrase.
Naomi remembered the ring.
“Stay when the lights go out.”
The elevator opened.
A narrow tunnel disappeared beneath the frozen water.
At the far end, a man sat behind reinforced glass.
He lifted his head.
May you like
Naomi recognized his eyes.
Ethan was alive.
