Chapter 35 #2
Heart pounding, Ginger tore away from the safety of the doorway and practically sprinted up the stairs, Khalib just steps behind her. She waited for a shout, a voice—any sign that someone would stop her—but none came.
Breathlessly, she reached the top level. Now she had no instinct to guide her. The hallways looked equally splendid, leading to what she imagined would be beautiful rooms. She hurried up to the first door she found and tried it.
Locked.
Whirling toward Khalib, she said, “Try all the doors. Hurry.”
They raced down the hallway, trying each doorway as they went.
Every single one of the doors they tried was locked.
The thought made goose bumps rise on Ginger’s arms.
A house full of locked doors was somehow more terrifying than she’d imagined.
Desperation seeped in. How in the world could she find her son amidst the dizzying maze of doors and locks?
She gritted her teeth, sagging against one door, her heart still thundering so loudly in her chest that she feared she wouldn’t hear someone coming down the hallway at all.
Then her voice dropped to a whisper as she tapped on the door with a fingernail. “Alex?”
His name vanished into the heavy air, swallowed by the pristine, cold tile and shuttered doors.
No answer.
Khalib moved ahead of her, testing another handle—locked. The click of brass against wood sounded loud in the hush.
She moved to another door. “Alex,” she tried again, a fraction louder this time. Her pulse throbbed in her temples.
They split without speaking—she to the left, Khalib to the right—tapping softly on the ornate doors. She pressed her ear against the grain of the wood, straining for any hint of movement within.
Each silence stretched longer than the last, until her chest ached from holding her breath.
Another door. Another locked handle.
Her knuckles brushed the carved wood before she remembered to knock. “It’s Mama—Alex?”
Nothing.
Where could he be?
She moved faster now, urgency gnawing at the edges of her caution. If someone intercepted them, the pretense of a tuberculosis inspection wouldn’t save her. She barely held on by a thread, her desperation growing by the minute. All this effort. This silly ruse.
Her sense that she was just as far from Alex as ever.
Two more doors. No reply.
As she reached the end of the hallway, her hope faded. Her chest burned with frustration, with fear. There were other hallways, other bedrooms, of course, but they’d been fortunate not to be spotted yet. How long before their luck ran out?
She tapped on the last door, praying for an answer.
God, please. Help me. Help me find my son.
Her knock was answered by the faint scrape of a chair leg on tile.
She froze, hand still on the panel.
Khalib glanced over, his expression sharpening.
A shadow shifted beneath the thin line of light at the door’s threshold, and Ginger felt dizzy with hope.
“Who’s there?” a voice came softly.
Not Alex’s.
A woman’s.
Whoever was on the other side of this door might not only be Federline’s ally but also someone with the means to report Ginger to him immediately.
As disappointment washed over her, Ginger found her voice answering in the clipped, practiced official tone she used in the hospital when necessary.
“Nurse Hardwick, here under order of inspection,” she said, pitching the words just loud enough to carry through the wood.
“We’ve had reports of illness in the household. ”
“Help me. Please.”
What on earth?
Every muscle in Ginger’s body seemed to tighten. She stepped closer, pressing her palm to the warm polished wood. “Who are you?”
Another pause. “I can’t—” The woman’s voice broke. “He’ll hear me. Please, you have to get me out of here.”
Khalib was beside her now, his hand hovering near the hilt of the knife at his belt, eyes sweeping the hall. Every second they lingered here, the danger climbed.
Ginger kept her voice low but firm. “Is there a boy here?”
Before a reply came, another sound made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Footsteps. Faint at first, then unmistakable. Heavy and growing louder down the hall.
Khalib’s gaze snapped to hers, caution pooling in those dark depths. They had only seconds to decide—walk away and risk leaving another innocent person to suffer or open the door and risk everything.
Khalib grabbed her by the elbow. “We must go,” he hissed in an urgent tone.
“Please. Please. I’m desperate. He’s been keeping me here for months.”
Something in her words stopped Ginger’s heart cold. She exchanged a wary look with Khalib. “Can you pick the lock?” she asked him.
“That won’t help—I can do that much myself,” the woman said. “There’s an iron latch at the top of the door. It’s stopping me from opening the door. All I need is for you to flip it open.”
“Someone is coming,” Ginger whispered.
“Please—I’m begging you. Just flip the latch.”
Ginger lifted her gaze, scanning the door. Sure enough, the woman was right. A hinged latch, screwed into the door frame, held the door into place. While most doors opened into rooms, these appeared to swing the opposite way—into the hallway—which was what kept the door sealed shut.
A shiver ran up Ginger’s spine. What sort of lunatic designed his home in such a way?
She raised her hand, reaching for the latch. It hovered inches out of her grasp. She appealed to Khalib, who stepped closer, then flipped it.
The footsteps were closer now. Ginger turned to glance, her fingers trembling. They were at the end of the hall, and all other doors were locked—nowhere for them to go. “We’re trapped,” Ginger said to Khalib. “They’ll see us.”
A metallic scrape clicked from the door, then the handle turned. “Hurry, in here,” the woman’s voice said. The door opened. With nowhere else to go and no other chance of escape, Ginger darted inside, pulling Khalib with her.
They shut the door and Ginger turned, breathless, to see the woman who’d opened the door.
She froze, her heart slamming into her ribs as the memory broke over her like a wave—the blinding Maltese sun, the cry of a bird above the cliff, her friend’s pale hands slick with blood, the way her blue eyes had searched Ginger’s just before she fell backward into nothing. The salt sting, the sickening drop.
Sixteen years, and the scene was as sharp as glass in her mind.
Though the years had passed, the long golden-blond braid was the same.
A hint of age—and many more freckles—showed on her pretty face.
She was impossibly thin but looked clean and well cared-for otherwise.
Ginger took in the cream-colored linen blouse, olive-green trousers, and sandals.
In terms of looks, nearly unchanged in sixteen years.
Sarah Anderson Hanover.
Ginger sprang back, knocking into Khalib, who steadied her.
“You died,” she whispered to Sarah, her voice trembling.
The words felt foreign on her tongue, as if saying them here, now, unmade all the years she had carried that grief.
Her mind rejected the sight before her even as her body believed it, the same way a wound sometimes refused to hurt until the patient saw the blood.
Sarah’s brow furrowed, her eyes wary. Then she came closer, touched the veil beside Ginger’s cheek, pushing the wig back and exposing a hint of red.
Her blue-eyed gaze snapped to Ginger’s. “Ginger?”
Ginger nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
How could this possibly be?
I saw her die.
She fell off a cliff.
“Sarah …” Ginger’s voice was rough and filled with emotion.
For years, Ginger had relived that cliff—the impossible arc of Sarah’s fall, the hollow splash, the circling black bird in the perfect blue sky—a loop that had played in her dreams and in the quietest moments of her waking life.
She had mourned Sarah like a sister. Now here she was, whole and breathing.
The world tilted beneath Ginger’s feet.
Sarah stepped back, sadness in her expression. “I’m not Sarah. I never was. And you’re right—Sarah Anderson died that day in Malta, Ginger. My name is Kit. Kit Federline.”
Ginger’s eyes widened. Federline?
Then, the door opened behind Ginger, and a distinctive male voice came before she could turn. “Dr. Benson. I see you’ve met my daughter.”
Khalib stepped in front of Ginger protectively.
“You bastard,” Ginger managed, setting a hand on Khalib’s prosthetic hand, to hold him back. “How dare you? Give me my son.”
“Did you honestly think this little health inspection would fool me?” Prescott gave her an amused smile. “I knew right away you must be here. Though I’ll admit I didn’t expect you here.” He took a menacing step closer.
Khalib’s knife came free from his waist in a flash. He lunged for Prescott, but startlingly, Prescott slipped his own knife from the sleeve of his shirt. He slashed at Khalib, striking him near the neck with a quick, blunt blow.
Ginger screamed.