Chapter 15 - The Person Behind Every Nightmare
While Emily remained under police protection, investigators reopened every unsolved disappearance connected to the apartment building.
Detective Bennett noticed an unusual pattern.
Every missing person had worked in construction.
Every one of them had participated in renovations carried out twenty-five years earlier.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Victor Hale.
The architect.
Police searched Victor's abandoned office.
Most documents had been removed years earlier.
But inside a hidden wall safe they discovered several blueprints.
Not of the apartment building.
Of an underground structure beneath it.
The plans revealed tunnels extending almost three city blocks.
Maintenance passages.
Storage rooms.
Hidden exits.
Observation chambers.
Michael stared at the maps.
"My family lived above all this?"
"For seven years."
"There are this many hidden rooms?"
"There may be more."
One section of the blueprint had been crossed out by hand.
Beside it someone had written:
Project Raven must never be completed.
Bennett looked at Michael.
"Does that mean anything to you?"
He slowly shook his head.
"No."
A forensic technician entered carrying another folder.
"We've recovered fingerprints from Victor Hale's office."
"Victor's?"
"No."
"Daniel's?"
"No."
The technician looked uncomfortable.
"They belong to someone already in the police database."
"Who?"
He slid the report across the table.
Michael read the name once.
Then again.
His breathing stopped.
James Turner.
His father.
"But..."
Michael whispered.
"My father died fifteen years ago."
Bennett didn't answer immediately.
She simply pointed toward the fingerprint timestamp.
The print had been left...
May you like
Less than six months earlier.
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