PART 2: The Man in the Crate
I fell to my knees and fumbled at the crate’s latch with fingers that would not work. The lid lifted from the inside, and a man pushed himself up into the dim light. He was gaunt, with a ragged beard and a purple bruise spreading across one cheekbone. There were raw red rope burns circling both of his wrists. His gray t-shirt was stiff with dirt. But his eyes were Daniel’s eyes, and when he gripped the edge of the crate, I saw the thin white scar across the base of his left thumb.
I made a sound I had never made before, half sob and half laugh, and threw my arms around his thin shoulders. He smelled of sweat and damp concrete, and he was shaking harder than I was. “It’s me,” he whispered into my hair. “It’s really me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I wanted to hold him until the whole building fell down around us, but he gently pulled back and pressed one finger to his lips. “We have two minutes, maybe less. Listen to me.”
He spoke in a rapid, scraped-out whisper, and I knelt close enough to feel each word. Three weeks ago, outside the airport in Chicago, a car he assumed was his ride had pulled up to the curb. Victor Kane had been behind the wheel. Victor was his business partner of eleven years, the man who had been best man at our wedding. A second man had grabbed Daniel from behind, and a needle had gone into his neck. He woke in a rented warehouse in Queens, bound to a metal chair.
“Nineteen days,” Daniel whispered. “They kept me there nineteen days. Last night they moved me here in this crate. Victor thought the warehouse was getting too risky.” He swallowed hard. “They threw my things in a bag to burn later. My phone was in it, dead. When they left me alone, I dragged the bag over with my foot and plugged it into the outlet behind that shelf. It got to nine percent and found the building Wi-Fi.”
I looked at the little cracked phone lying on the crate floor, a thin cable snaking away to a socket. Its screen glowed with my own message. Prove it. “But the man upstairs has your number,” I said. “He texts me from it, too.” Daniel shook his head. “Victor cloned it. That’s how they’ve been answering your texts. But the real phone, the one in my hand, still receives everything. They never thought about the Wi-Fi.”
“Who is he?” I asked, though I was afraid to hear the answer. Daniel closed his eyes. “His name is Owen Brandt. He’s an out-of-work actor from Ohio. Victor found him in a casting call, because he looks enough like me to pass in dim light. They studied me for months, Claire. My voice, my walk, how I take my coffee, the way I laugh. They studied you, too.” I thought of the sugar in the coffee, the humming in the shower, and the nickname that should have belonged only to us.
“They missed one thing,” he said, lifting his left hand. “The scar. I always wore a glove in photographs, and I never thought to tell them. It was a stupid little detail, and it’s why you’re standing here.” I laughed, and the laugh broke into a sob. He caught my face in his rough hands. “Why would Victor do this?” I whispered. “To me. To us.”
“Money,” Daniel said. “Six million dollars out of our clients’ trust accounts, over four years. I found it the night before I left for Chicago. I was going to take it to the police on Monday, and I’d already called a financial crimes detective, Elena Ramirez. Victor must have been listening.” His eyes grew fierce. “And he needs me. Monday morning there’s a board vote to move everything into a new account, and my shares sit in a spousal trust. It takes my signature and yours.”
The pieces slid together with a cold click. The impostor in my bed was not there to steal Daniel’s life for fun. He was there to keep me calm and trusting until Monday, when I would sign whatever he put in front of me. “Memorize this,” Daniel said, and he recited a phone number twice, until it was burned into my head. “Detective Ramirez. Do not call anyone else. Not your sister, not the doorman. We don’t know who Victor has bought.”
I was nodding, repeating the number under my breath, when the footsteps stopped just beyond the cage. The singing stopped, too. “Hide,” I breathed, and Daniel sank back into the crate. I eased the lid shut over him as quietly as I could, then grabbed the nearest cardboard box and turned to face the corridor with my heart slamming against my ribs. Owen’s shadow fell across the chain-link.
He appeared in the doorway wearing a gray crew-neck shirt and black shorts, his hair still tousled from sleep. His smile was perfect. It was Daniel’s smile, to the last dimple. “There you are,” he said. “Gus said you never came through the lobby. I got worried.” I held up the box, which I now saw was labeled FALL DECORATIONS in my own handwriting. “I wanted the wreath,” I said. “For the door. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
His gaze moved slowly around the cage. It lingered on the open padlock, on the zip-tied tag, and then on the long wooden crate behind me. My mouth went dry. “This isn’t our cage,” he said gently. “Oh,” I said. “The number was smudged. I guess I got the wrong one.” He stepped closer, one hand reaching for the crate’s lid, and I was suddenly certain I was going to watch him open it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened. “Give me a second, babe,” he said, and he stepped out into the corridor with the phone against his ear. His voice dropped low, flat and nothing like Daniel’s. I caught only fragments through the humming pipes. “She’s fine… Monday, yes… no, I’ll handle it… I said I’ll handle it, Victor.”
He came back inside, slid an arm around my shoulders, and squeezed hard enough to bruise. “Let’s get you upstairs. Pancakes,” he said, and he steered me out of the cage so smoothly that I barely had time to look back. I heard no sound from the crate. The elevator carried us up, silent except for the faint music, and I stared at the floor numbers and prayed that Daniel would stay quiet and that I could reach a phone.
Upstairs, he made me sit at the kitchen island, poured me orange juice, and hummed while he cracked eggs into a bowl. My phone was not on the nightstand where I had left it. I knew, because I slipped into the bedroom on the pretext of changing my shoes, and the nightstand was bare. When I came back, he was standing at the island, leaning on one elbow, my phone in his hand and a gentle, patient smile on his face. He turned the screen toward me. “Interesting thread,” he said softly. “Who’s been texting you from my number?”
