My Sister's Tears Stole My First Life, Not My Second novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five Taps

Remembering a stranger's kindness at Christmas, Winnie uses the estate's emergency channel to send her father's hidden ledger to the will's overseer, and hotel security opens her door, just as Quentin grabs her wrist.

I tried the handle anyway.

It didn't move.

My phone was in Quentin's pocket. So was my driver's license, and my keycard, and every dollar I had saved.

The windows were sealed glass, thirty-one floors above the harbor.

There was no landline. Nobody had used this suite since Mother died.

It was exactly like last time.

In my first life, I sat on that bed and cried until the women came back with a dress.

I went downstairs and let them hand me to Easton.

This time I walked a slow circle around the room.

The bed. The vanity. Mother's books on the bottom shelf, untouched for six years.

The smart tablet glowing on the wall by the door.

It ran the lights and the curtains and room service. It couldn't call out.

Then I remembered a man with a cup of cocoa.

My first Christmas in Boston, Quentin took Tinsley and me to the family party in the hotel's top-floor ballroom.

There was one gift box that year, from a jewelry designer Mother had loved.

Tinsley smiled and told me to pick first.

I took the moonstone brooch.

Her fingers started to shake. She said moonstones reminded her of Mother's last Christmas.

Quentin lifted the box out of my hands.

"She was letting you look. That doesn't make it yours."

Then, louder, to the room, "You can't come back after twenty years and start grabbing your sister's things."

Everyone stared at me.

I went and stood in a corner behind a potted tree.

A man found me there.

Tall, in a black suit, with a scar through one eyebrow and a face that didn't give much away.

He held out a mug of hot cocoa.

"The champagne here isn't for you," he said.

I knew who he was.

Simon Clancy. Father had named him in the will as the independent overseer of the estate.

He glanced across the room at Quentin and lowered his voice.

"My company wired the security and the smart systems in every Talcott building. We left an oversight channel in them. Your father asked for it."

He told me how it worked.

Tap the logo on any room tablet five times. Enter the date Father signed his will.

A message would go straight to his office.

"If anyone keeps you somewhere you don't want to be," he said, "or puts a pen in your hand you didn't ask for, use it."

I thought he was being polite. Doing his job.

In my first life, I never touched it.

I never found out that the one person in this family's orbit who was kind to me had also handed me a way out.

I went to the tablet.

I tapped the little gold logo five times.

The screen went white, then gray.

A plain box appeared.

Emergency Oversight Channel. Authentication.

My hands were shaking.

March 3.

The screen blinked and opened a message field.

I didn't type yet.

I went to the bookcase first and knelt in front of Mother's books.

Her old copy of Little Women was at the end of the bottom row, the spine soft and cracked.

In my first life, I found what was inside it the week before Quentin had all her things boxed up and thrown away.

I opened the back cover and slid two fingers into the hollow of the spine.

A thin notebook came out, folded once.

Father's handwriting. Small and slanted.

Every withdrawal from my fund. The date, the amount, and what Quentin had called it in the books.

"Equestrian training." Ninety-eight thousand six hundred.

"Banquet." Fourteen thousand two hundred.

"Event expenses." Eight thousand two hundred.

At the bottom of the last page, Father had written one line.

Ask Q. Ask him why.

He'd never asked.

He got sick first.

I held each page up to the tablet's camera and photographed it.

Then I photographed the locked door.

Then I typed.

"This is Winnie Honeycutt. Quentin Talcott took my phone and ID and locked me in the thirty-first-floor suite of the Talcott Harbor Hotel. He has been taking money from my settlement fund. He's trying to make me marry Easton Lathrop today and sign away my inheritance."

I read it once.

I hit send.

Message received. Encrypted.

Then nothing.

I sat on the floor by the door with the notebook on my knees and listened to the clock on the vanity.

The bedspread was the same pale blue Mother had picked.

I wondered if she'd ever slept in this room and thought about me.

Nine minutes later, somebody knocked hard.

"Ms. Talcott? Hotel security. We've had an outside request for a wellness check."

A woman's voice answered from the hall. One of the household staff.

"She's resting. She asked not to be disturbed."

"Then she can tell us that herself. Open the door, ma'am, or we'll use emergency access."

A pause.

Then the lock gave a soft click.

The door swung in.

Two officers in hotel security jackets stood in the hall with body cameras clipped to their chests.

The household staff had backed up against the far wall.

I got to my feet with Father's notebook in my hand.

"I'm being held here against my will," I said. "My phone and my ID were taken from me."

The older officer looked at the lock, then at me.

"Are you hurt, ma'am?"

"No."

I looked straight into his camera so it would get my face.

"Please get me out of here."

He nodded and stepped back to let me through.

I barely started down the hallway.

Then the private elevator opened, and Quentin came out of it fast.

He caught my wrist before I could step around him.

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