The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Voicemail

Braden's POV

I told myself I was only going to play it once.

I sat in the study at two in the morning with the door locked and the phone face up on the blotter, and I opened the file.

It was a short file.

I knew every word of it.

"Braden." Daphne's voice, close to the microphone, calm and low. "Room four. The door's open. Hurry."

After that the line only hissed, for a long time, and then it clicked and the file ended.

I had always taken the hiss for a dead line.

I had played it a few thousand times in seven years.

In my head it had always been a cry for help.

That was how she had explained it to me, in the cold light of the next morning, shaking in my mother's guest room.

She said she had been in a bathroom stall, whispering, with a man waiting outside the door.

She said she had tried to send me to her, and had named the wrong room in her panic.

I had believed her.

I had walked into room four and found the dark, and a woman on the bed in a pink dress who did not say a word.

It was Daphne's dress.

I had thought it was Daphne.

I had put my hand on her face and said her name and told her I was there, and the woman in the bed had not answered.

She had not pushed me off.

She had lain there, and I had thought she was in shock.

At half past twelve, the hall light came through the door, and I saw it was Joanna.

I stood in that room, and I could not work out what I had done.

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