Chapter 4: A Missing Letter

Holt held the apple by its stem, turning it slowly beneath the corridor light.

“Looking for this, Moretti?”

Elena left the coat cuff folded over Sofia’s page. She stepped out of her cell with her hands visible.

“It was taken when they moved me.”

“Property gets misplaced.” Holt smiled without warmth. “Funny thing to be upset about.”

Mina stayed beside her laundry cart. Elena could see her trying to decide whether to move closer. Elena shook her head almost imperceptibly.

“You asked me about my sister yesterday,” Elena said. “Now you have her favorite kind of apple.”

Holt’s fingers closed around it. “I asked you to pick another seat. That’s all.”

He dropped the fruit into the trash can beside the stairwell. The skin split against the metal rim.

“Back inside.”

Elena obeyed. She heard him direct Mina to deliver the towels downstairs, away from the upper corridor. His steps followed the cart until both sounds faded.

Inside her cell, Elena removed the paper from the cuff. She memorized the six names and four dates, then folded the page into the paperback’s cover. Tess was one of the names. Two others were women Elena had seen at breakfast. The last name belonged to someone she had not yet met.

She could pass the page to her contact if she was removed from Grayhaven. But a handwritten list alone would prove little about who ordered the thefts, and Mina was already exposed. Elena needed a witness who could explain what Sofia had seen after lights out.

The next morning, her heel had bled through the nurse’s bandage. Elena showed it at sick call and asked that the bunk be repaired. A maintenance request went on a form. Holt, posted near the door, watched her sign it.

“You always write everything down?” he asked.

“When something needs fixing.”

He took the form before the nurse could file it. “I’ll see that it gets where it belongs.”

Elena did not argue. She asked the nurse for a copy, received a refusal, and noted the time on the clock above the cabinets.

On her way out, she saw a woman waiting with a swollen ankle and an empty water cup. The nurse was trying to locate an incident report that should have accompanied her. The woman said she had fallen on a wet floor. When Holt entered, she stopped talking. Elena recognized her name from Sofia’s list. She could have pressed for details then, but the woman’s fingers were white around the cup. Elena gave her the chair closest to the nurse and left without mentioning the paper.

That afternoon, an officer searched her cell while she stood outside. The officer lifted the mattress, turned out the pockets of both uniforms, and flipped through every page of the paperback. Elena watched her find Sofia’s list.

The officer stopped. “What’s this?”

“A page my sister wrote.”

Holt appeared at the end of the walkway. He did not need to come any closer for Elena to see that he recognized the paper.

The searching officer held it out to him. Elena spoke before he could take it.

“Please log it if you confiscate it. It belonged to Sofia Moretti.”

“It isn’t approved property,” Holt said.

“Then you’ll have a reason for taking it.”

The other officer looked between them. With visible reluctance, she wrote the description on an inventory slip: one handwritten paper, names and dates. She gave Elena the carbon copy.

Holt took the original page. He had found what he came for, but now another officer had seen it, and a record showed it had existed.

“You’re finished here,” he told Elena.

The search cost Elena her book and an afternoon of confinement. It also cost her a chance to speak privately with Mina. At evening count, she saw Mina’s cart outside a different laundry room. Vera stood nearby, inspecting the clean coats as though she had been assigned the task.

Elena asked the count officer for the property log. He said the paper would be kept until a supervisor decided whether to return it. She asked who the supervisor was. He gave her a name she had not heard before, Deputy Warden Pierce, and told her the office accepted written requests only.

Elena borrowed a pencil and used the back of her disciplinary notice. She requested the evidence log number, the name of the person holding Sofia’s page, and preservation of the housing search record. The officer complained that the request was too long. Elena copied it onto two forms, signed both, and handed them over while he watched. He had to stamp them received. She kept her own copies.

No form could protect Mina by itself. Still, if Holt removed the paper now, he would have to explain why a logged item had vanished. Elena hoped he would spend time solving that problem instead of looking for the woman who had sewn it into a cuff.

When Elena was finally allowed to collect dinner, Tess stepped aside to let her pass. There was a cut on Tess’s lower lip.

“Did Vera do that?” Elena asked.

Tess touched her mouth. “I walked into a shelf.”

“I won’t put your name on a complaint without asking you.”

Tess looked startled. Then Vera called her from the far table, and she went.

Elena ate with Mina under the dining room camera. The older woman did not ask about the page. She stared at Elena’s empty hands until Elena said, “It’s logged. Someone else saw it.”

Mina’s shoulders lowered a fraction. “Sofia tried to do that.”

“Tell me what happened when the lights went out.”

Mina set down her fork. “Not here.”

“Where, then?”

“Tomorrow they’ll let you back in the yard. The far fence, after the second count.”

Elena nodded. Holt’s name was on the confiscation slip. She could no longer keep Mina away from the investigation, but she could give her a choice about entering it.

Across the room, Vera held up a folded sheet of paper and tapped it against her palm. Holt glanced toward her. Vera tucked the sheet into her sleeve.

Elena could not see the writing. She saw Holt’s face, though: a man who had handed over one page because he believed he still controlled the rest.