"I need to give you something."
"Leave it outside."
"It's important."
"Then give it to the police."
She looked over her shoulder.
"Please. We don't have much time."
I opened the door with the chain still fastened.
Denise held up a small envelope.
"Your father gave this to me."
I stared at it.
"When?"
"October 6, 1994."
"Why do you have it?"
"Because he asked me to keep it until you were old enough."
I felt anger rising in my chest.
"Old enough for what? I'm not a child anymore."
"I know."
"Then tell me what happened."
She looked down at the envelope.
"Not here."
"That's what you said yesterday."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
Her eyes filled with tears.
"I was there when your father disappeared. I was eighteen years old, and I watched him walk into that station. He told me he would be back in an hour."
"What happened?"
"He never came out."
"Did you see anyone else?"
She nodded.
"Martin Cole."
I stepped closer to the door.
"Why didn't you tell the police?"
"Because Martin told me your father had stolen something from Harrow. He said the police would arrest him if I spoke."
"Was that true?"
"No."
"How do you know?"
"Because I later found out Martin had taken the documents himself."
I stared at her.
"Then why did you tell me not to trust him?"
"Because I thought he was still working for the people who took your father."
"Who took him?"
Denise looked toward the street.
"I don't know."
She pushed the envelope through the narrow gap in the door.
"Read it. Then decide whether you still want to meet me."
I took it.
"Why the pumping station?"
"Because there's something there that your father left behind."
"What?"
"A recording."
"Of what?"
"Of the night he disappeared."
She stepped back.
"Tomorrow morning, I'll go to the police with you. But tonight, don't open that chamber. Don't go near the metal plate. And don't trust anyone who tells you they know what happened to Robert Hale."
"Does that include you?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Especially me."
Then she turned and walked away.
I closed the door and removed the chain.
The envelope was old, its edges yellowed and soft. My father's handwriting appeared on the front.
For my son.
Inside was a small cassette tape and a folded sheet of paper.
The note was brief.
If you are hearing this, I failed to return. The people involved believe the truth is buried beneath Briar Glen. They are wrong. The evidence is somewhere else. Trust the person who has the least reason to trust me.
I read the final sentence again.
The person who had the least reason to trust my father.
Denise?
Martin?
My mother?
I looked at the cassette.
I didn't own a cassette player, but there was an old electronics shop downtown that repaired vintage equipment. I could take it there in the morning.
Before I went to bed, I locked every door and checked the windows twice.
At 2:13 a.m., my phone lit up.
A message from an unknown number.
DON'T PLAY THE TAPE.
A second message arrived almost immediately.
YOUR FATHER ISN'T THE ONLY ONE WHO DISAPPEARED.
I stared at the screen.
Then a third message appeared.
ASK DENISE WHAT HAPPENED TO DANIEL RUIZ'S DAUGHTER.
I sat up slowly.
Daniel Ruiz had been dead for more than thirty years.
What could have happened to his daughter?
And why had someone waited until now to tell me to ask?
I looked toward the kitchen, where the cassette tape lay inside its envelope.
For the first time, I wondered whether the story of Briar Glen had not been about a buried chamber at all.
Perhaps the chamber had only been the place where everyone had hidden the truth.
And perhaps the truth had been moving through this neighborhood for decades, passing from one frightened person to another, waiting for someone foolish enough to uncover it.
Mình sẽ viết tiếp liền mạch Part 7 và Part 8 bằng tiếng Anh, giữ ngôi kể và các bí mật đã hé lộ ở sáu phần trước. Hai phần này sẽ đào sâu bí ẩn về con gái của Daniel Ruiz và sự thật đằng sau đêm cha nhân vật chính biến mất.
I did not play the tape.
Not that night.
I sat at the kitchen table until dawn, the cassette recorder resting between my hands like something alive. Every few minutes, I turned it over, studying the handwritten label Denise had placed on its side.