Room 14's Secret novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Dupe

Melinda's POV

The microphone was warm from Giselle's hand.

Three hundred faces looked up at me in the light, kind and curious and braced for a scene.

"Thank you all for coming," I said. "A month ago I was in a hospital room with a lock on the outside of the door."

The room went quiet.

"I'm told I was very ill. I'm told there are recordings that prove it. You were all so generous not to say so."

Someone near the front shifted in her seat.

"Tonight I have a recording of my own."

I held up the small black drive.

Giselle's smile did not move, but her eyes went to the back of the room, where the technician stood beside a man in a brown suit.

He took the drive from my outstretched hand at the foot of the steps and walked it to his desk.

The golden film of Quinton vanished.

A black screen took its place, and then a waveform, and then Giselle's voice came out of the ceiling in every corner of the ballroom.

"Nobody ever checks on the nice friend, Quinton. That's the beauty of it.

"You bring a casserole to a funeral and they hand you the keys to the house."

The silence was complete.

A man's fork rang against a plate and was hushed.

"I picked Melinda the day her father was buried," the voice went on, light and fond. "She was grieving and rich, and she had no one but me."

The file ended.

Giselle laughed.

It was a lovely laugh, rueful and tender, and it carried to every table.

"Oh, Melinda," she said, gently, to the microphone in my hand and the faces below. "Honey. It's a voice on a stick."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Room 14's Secret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.