Chapter 2

My car was the only one speeding on the highway at one hundred miles per hour. My left hand stayed on the steering wheel, and my right hand clicked through my phone as I searched for a flight.

When I reached the fourth company, a webpage appeared for a private flight. It was a small plane that could take off in the middle of the night, and the earliest flight was in an hour. It cost four thousand dollars, and I needed to transfer the money right away. It took me three tries to complete the transfer.

My watch vibrated again, and I heard Dottie singing, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

Dottie was breathless between every word she sang. She struggled to breathe, yet she tried to finish the song. I bit my lip until it bled, and I tasted blood in my mouth. She suddenly stopped singing. “I can’t sing anymore, Mommy. My lips feel hard, and I can’t open them.”

Her lips were turning stiff. That meant her muscles were losing temperature. “Listen to me, Baby. Stand up and clap your hands. Clap hard. Clap loud enough, and Mommy will buy you that singing rabbit you wanted.”

“I can’t do it, Mommy. My fingers won’t listen to me.”

Her words made me press harder on the gas.

My phone buzzed at that moment. It was a voice message from my superior, and his voice exploded in the car. “Nina, you’re the person in charge of the contract signing with Northern Industries at eight in the morning tomorrow. I don’t care what happened to your daughter. You need to be present, or I’ll dock forty-five thousand dollars from your pay for breach of contract.”

I blocked his number right away. My daughter was alone with a group of corpses, and she was freezing so badly that she could hardly open her mouth, and these people were trying to blackmail me with forty-five thousand dollars.

My phone vibrated again. This time, it was a call from 911. “Are the police there?”

The voice on the other end sounded young and hesitant. “Madam Shore, we are already at the funeral parlor, but there is a Madam James at the wake, and she has a little girl by her side. The girl is wearing a pink jacket, and she told us she was staying with her father during his wake.”

“That is not my daughter. That is her daughter. Have you asked the name of the girl?”

The police officer asked the girl her name in a low voice, and a child replied, “My name is Sweety Crumb.”

“Did you hear that? Her name is Sweety Crumb, not Dottie Crumb. My daughter is in the mortuary refrigerator, the room at the end in Building B.”

There was a long silence before Edie’s voice was heard. She sounded soft and even choked back a sob. “Do not listen to her, Officer. Dottie is Sweety’s nickname. Her mother has been giving me trouble since she divorced my husband. She is always calling in the middle of the night to make up some lie.”

Edie’s sobbing grew louder. “It has not been long since my husband’s passing, and she is already making a scene.”

The veins on my temple throbbed, and the steering wheel squeaked under my grip. “She is lying. Open the door to Building B, and you will see for yourselves. All you need to do is take a look.”

“Madam Shore, Madam James is the legal spouse of your ex-husband. She told us that the doors to the mortuary refrigerator are problematic and cannot be opened. We would need to wait for the supervisor to come in the morning to handle this. We cannot force open the door without a warrant.”

“Are you going to do nothing and allow a six-year-old freeze to death inside?”

There was no reply.

“We will continue to assist in this investigation, Madam Shore. Please calm down.”

After hanging up, I slammed the steering wheel three times, and the muffled sounds of my knuckles hitting the leather echoed in the car. A text notification appeared on my phone. It was from Edie, who had sent me a photo.

Sweety was wearing the pink jacket I bought for Dottie last week, and she was sitting on a heating sofa at the wake with a bowl of hot cocoa in her hand while smiling sweetly. The text said, ‘What a good girl Sweety is to stay by her daddy’s side on behalf of her older sister. She is well-fed and staying warm. There is no need for you to worry about anything.’

One sister was enjoying cocoa in a stolen jacket, while the other was freezing among a group of corpses and hardly able to open her mouth.

My phone rang again. It was a video call from Mandy. “I’m here, Nina. The doors to the funeral parlor are locked, and the security guard refuses to open them for me. I told him a little girl was about to freeze to death inside, but he insists he will not open the doors for non-family members at midnight.”

“Climb over the walls. The wall is lower on the east side. You can climb over there.”

Mandy paused for a second before replying, “All right.”

I heard Mandy trying to get over the wall through the phone. The metal gates clanged when she grabbed them, and her clothes tore on the sharp ends of the gate. After that, I heard her land on the ground and take a sharp breath from the pain.

“All right, I’m in. I’m heading toward Building B right now.”

Mandy ran frantically, and her breathing grew heavier, but she suddenly stopped. “I’m here. It is a gray, short building with a metal door, but there is a huge lock on it.”

“Try listening through the door.”

There was a long silence. My hands were sweating as I gripped the steering wheel, and I almost lost my hold as the moisture made it slippery.

Mandy’s tone changed. “I can hear her. It is really soft, but it sounds like she is crying. Dottie is alive, Nina.”

“Break down that door. Get a brick and break the lock.”

The sound of a brick hit the metal.

Clang.

“I can’t do it. This is an industrial-grade lock. The brick broke apart, but the lock is unscathed. My hands are bleeding, but I can’t get it open.”

“Do not stop hitting the lock.”

That was when I stopped hearing anything from Mandy’s end. I saw a flash of light from someone’s flashlight, and I heard the footsteps of more than one person. Edie’s voice came through the dark. “That is her. She is the trespasser. What is security doing?”

I heard Mandy struggling as she was dragged away. “Let me go. There is a child in there.”

A rough male voice covered hers. “Stop moving, or we will call the police. Throw her out of here.”

The call ended. I tried calling back, but no one picked up.