PART 3 — THE VOICE FROM SIX MONTHS AGO
The ambulance doors were still open when Detective Reyes held up the evidence bag.
Inside it was the old phone.
The same scratched screen.
The same cracked corner.
The same phone I had hidden beneath the cage floor because Marcus had forgotten it existed.
But now Detective Reyes was telling me there was a recording on it from six months ago.
A recording I had never made.
“Who’s speaking?” Natalie asked.
The detective hesitated.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Marcus.”
My chest tightened.
“And someone else.”
“His mother?” I asked.
“No.”
For some reason, that answer frightened me more.
The paramedic beside me checked the monitor strapped around my stomach.
My baby’s heartbeat was racing almost as quickly as mine.
Detective Reyes leaned closer.
“The second voice belongs to a woman.”
Natalie frowned.
“One of the women he was seeing?”
“We don’t know yet.”
He lowered his voice.
“But she says your name.”
I stared at him.
“What does she say?”
Before he could answer, another contraction tore through me.
I grabbed the edge of the stretcher and cried out.
The paramedic immediately pushed Detective Reyes back.
“She needs to go. Now.”
The ambulance doors closed.
For the next twenty minutes, the recording disappeared beneath a much more immediate terror.
My baby was coming.
The paramedic kept telling me to breathe.
Natalie held my hand so tightly our fingers hurt.
I stared at the ceiling while streetlights flashed through the windows.
Every bump in the road sent pain through my entire body.
Yet one thought refused to leave me.
A woman.
Six months ago.
Saying my name.
By the time we reached the hospital, doctors were waiting.
Everything became bright lights, hurried voices, gloves, monitors, questions.
“How long have you been bleeding?”
“When did you last eat properly?”
“How long were you confined?”
I tried to answer.
Some questions I could not.
Time had stopped meaning anything inside that basement.
Natalie answered whenever I couldn’t.
Then one doctor looked at another.
Their expressions changed.
“We need to deliver this baby now.”
Fear hit me harder than anything Marcus had done.
“Is my baby okay?”
“We’re doing everything we can.”
Those six words terrified me.
I squeezed Natalie’s hand.
“Don’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
They rushed me down a hallway.
And hours later, after pain so intense I thought my body would break apart, I heard the smallest sound in the world.
A cry.
Weak.
Then louder.
My baby.
I started sobbing.
A nurse lifted a tiny little girl into view.
“She’s breathing.”
I covered my mouth.
For three weeks, Marcus had used my unborn child to keep me afraid.
Now my daughter was here.
Alive.
They placed her briefly against my chest.
She was so small.
So warm.
So completely unaware of the nightmare she had survived with me.
I kissed her forehead.
“You made it,” I whispered.
But our peace lasted less than an hour.
Detective Reyes arrived at the hospital just before sunrise.
He was carrying a folder.
Natalie stood beside my bed.
My daughter slept in a bassinet nearby while machines quietly monitored us both.
The detective closed the door.
“We identified the second voice.”
Marcus’s mother had been arrested.
Marcus was in custody.
So there was only one question left.
“Who is she?”
Detective Reyes opened the folder.
“Her name is Rebecca Hale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Natalie looked confused too.
“Should we know her?”
The detective slid a photograph across the table beside my bed.
A woman in her early thirties stared back at me.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
A small scar above her eyebrow.
I shook my head.
“I’ve never seen her.”
Detective Reyes watched me carefully.
“She disappeared five years ago.”
The room went silent.
I looked again at the photograph.
“What does that have to do with Marcus?”
The detective sat down.
“Rebecca worked at the same company Marcus worked for before you met him.”
My stomach turned.
“She disappeared after telling friends she was planning to leave town.”
Natalie whispered, “Was she involved with him?”
“We believe so.”
I stared at Detective Reyes.
“What was on the recording?”
He paused.
Then he placed the phone on the table and pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then Marcus’s voice.
Clear.
Angry.
“You should have stayed quiet.”
My entire body went cold.
A woman answered.
Her voice was shaking.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
Marcus laughed.
“You should be.”
There was movement.
Something scraping across the floor.
Then the woman spoke again.
“You did the same thing to Elena.”
I looked at Natalie.
“Elena?”
Detective Reyes raised one finger.
Keep listening.
Marcus’s voice returned.
“Elena was stupid.”
Rebecca sounded like she was crying.
“She trusted you.”
“So did you.”
A long silence followed.
Then Rebecca whispered something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“And now your wife will too.”
My breathing stopped.
The recording clicked off.
Nobody spoke.
Finally I whispered, “That was six months ago.”
“Yes.”
“She knew about me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Detective Reyes opened the folder again.
“Rebecca apparently contacted Marcus after years of hiding.”
Natalie stared at him.
“Why would she do that?”
“We think she wanted money.”
He shook his head.
“Or justice.”
He pulled out another page.
“Her family believed Rebecca was dead. She had disappeared deliberately because she was terrified Marcus would find her.”
I looked toward my sleeping daughter.
My hands began trembling.
Detective Reyes continued.
“Six months ago, she came back.”
“To confront him?”
“We think so.”
“And then?”
“She vanished again.”
The hospital room suddenly felt too small.
Natalie crossed her arms.
“So where is she now?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
I looked at the old phone.
“Why was her recording on my phone?”
Detective Reyes leaned back.
“That is the question.”
Then something struck me.
Marcus had given me that phone years earlier.
Before replacing it with a newer one.
I had assumed he had forgotten about it.
“What if it wasn’t my phone originally?”
Detective Reyes looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“When Marcus gave it to me, he said it was an old spare.”
Natalie’s eyes widened.
Detective Reyes immediately picked up the phone.
“You think it belonged to Rebecca?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned it over.
Then removed the protective case.
Something fell onto the blanket.
A tiny folded piece of paper.
My heart stopped.
Detective Reyes opened it carefully.
There were only four words written inside.
IF I DISAPPEAR, LOOK BELOW.
Natalie whispered, “Below what?”
Nobody knew.
But I did.
Not immediately.
Then the answer came to me.
The basement.
Marcus had always forbidden me from going near one particular corner before he imprisoned me.
There was an old storage cabinet there.
Heavy.
Bolted to the concrete.
He once told me the floor beneath it had foundation damage.
I looked at Detective Reyes.
“There’s something under the basement floor.”
He stood so quickly his chair scraped backward.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“But Marcus never let anyone move that cabinet.”
Detective Reyes grabbed his phone.
Within minutes, officers were returning to the house.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, dread settled into my stomach.
Because if Rebecca had hidden that message years earlier, she had expected someone eventually to find it.
And three hours later, Detective Reyes called Natalie.
I watched my sister answer.
At first, she said nothing.
Then her face turned white.
“What did you find?” I whispered.
Natalie slowly lowered the phone.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“They moved the cabinet.”
My throat tightened.
“And?”
She stared at me.
“There was a sealed opening beneath it.”
I could barely speak.
“What was inside?”
Natalie swallowed.
“Not what.”
Her voice broke.
“Who.”……..
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4…
