Chapter 3 - The Voice Inside the Whale
I went looking for Nico’s study after midnight.
That was the truth, although I would try to dress it differently when Dom caught me.
The corridor was dark. Rain tapped the windows. At the far end stood a heavy oak door.
I had almost reached it when Dom spoke behind me.
“Looking for something?”
I turned.
He stood near the stairs, one hand resting at his side.
“Water.”
“The kitchen’s the other way.”
“I got turned around.”
“In a straight hallway?”
I said nothing.
He looked older in the dim light.
More tired.
“I know he seems harmless when he’s teaching your daughter to sand wood,” he said. “He isn’t.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good.”
He stepped closer.
“But he isn’t what Whittaker told you either.”
My stomach tightened.
Dom noticed.
“Thirty years,” he said. “That’s how long I’ve known him. I’ve seen what betrayal does to that man.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. He’d never forgive me.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Asking you not to mistake kindness for stupidity.”
He walked me back to the east wing.
I did not sleep.
The next morning, I asked Whittaker to move us.
He went silent.
“I thought you didn’t trust safe houses.”
“I don’t trust this arrangement.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Tessa.”
I looked at Junie, who was drawing three figures beside a crooked boat.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
His voice changed.
The weary patience vanished.
“You agreed.”
“I agreed because someone killed a woman in front of my child.”
“And I’m trying to prevent it happening again.”
“Then protect us without asking me to search somebody’s house.”
A long silence followed.
Finally, he said, “Stay where you are. I’ll arrange something.”
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I felt as though I had placed something breakable on the edge of a table.
That evening, Nico invited us to the main sitting room.
The weather had worsened. Wind drove rain against the glass, and Mrs. Pace insisted the east wing felt drafty.
Junie brought a picture book.
Nico brought Button.
He set the whale on the arm of his chair while my daughter explained that whales were mammals, which meant they should probably wear coats in November.
I almost smiled.
Then a faint sound came from the chair.
A click.
A burst of static.
Junie looked up.
Nico did too.
At first, I thought it was his hearing aid or a radio somewhere nearby.
Then a voice crackled through the stuffed whale.
“East wing at three ten. Keep Lind alive until we have the archive.”
Junie stared.
“Mister,” she whispered, “your whale is talking.”
Nico went pale.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it in hospital corridors, parked cars, and the bathroom of a safe house while a woman bled outside.
Dean Whittaker.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Nico stood.
“Dom.”
The name came out quietly.
Dom appeared in the doorway almost immediately.
Nico pointed at Button.
The sound had stopped.
My daughter reached for the whale.
I caught her hand.
“Not right now, sweetheart.”
Her face changed.
It was the expression children wear when adults suddenly become frightening without explaining why.
“Did I do something?”
“No.”
I knelt.
“You did something very helpful.”
Dom lifted the toy and carried it toward the kitchen.
Nico turned to me.
“Did you know?”
I shook my head.
He held my gaze.
“Tell me clearly.”
“No.”
My voice broke.
“He repaired the seam. Before we came here. I thought—”
I couldn’t finish.
Nico looked toward Junie.
Then his expression hardened into something I had not seen before.
Not anger at her.
Not anger at me.
Calculation stripped of warmth.
“Mrs. Pace,” he said. “Take Junie to the interior guest room. Stay with her.”
“I’m not leaving my mother,” Junie said.
“I’m coming.”
I lifted her into my arms.
Over her shoulder, I saw Dom return with the whale in a shallow metal tray.
The seam had been opened.
Inside, wrapped in stuffing, was an electronic module larger than anything I had imagined.
A tiny speaker.
A battery.
Wires.
“Its audio shouldn’t have opened,” Dom said. “Someone made a mistake.”
Nico looked at me.
“Your transmitter.”
I froze.
“I know about it.”
My face burned.
“I can explain.”
“You will. After we get your daughter somewhere safe.”
It was twenty minutes after two.
Whatever Whittaker had arranged was supposed to happen in less than an hour.
As we entered the inner hallway, I heard the faint alarm from Dom’s phone.
He looked down.
Then at Nico.
“Movement below the south cliffs.”
Nico took the tray from him.
Button lay on his side, one button eye facing the ceiling.
May you like
For eight days, I had held the thing that could lead killers to my daughter.
And the man I had been sent to betray was already opening the door to keep her alive.
