PART 3
Because I recognized that second voice immediately.
It belonged to Calvin Reeves.
Twenty years earlier, Calvin had been my closest friend in the attorney general’s office. He was the kind of man who remembered your coffee order, covered your blind spots, and stood beside you at funerals without needing to be asked. He had eaten at my kitchen table. He had brought Audrey birthday gifts when she was eight. He had hugged me at my wife’s burial and whispered, “I’ll always watch over your family.”
And now his voice was on a recording from my daughter’s prison.
“We buried that problem years ago.”
My hand tightened around the phone so hard the plastic case cracked.
Audrey slept in the hospital bed beside me, pale beneath the glow of machines. Her wrist was wrapped. Her forehead stitched. Her lips moved faintly in dreams I prayed she would not remember.I stepped into the corridor and called the number I had not dialed in six years.
