My Neighbor Heard a Woman Screaming in My Empty House—Then I Hid Under My Bed and Heard My “Dead” Husband’s Voice

PART 6

For the first time in two years, I believed the nightmare was over.

Derek was in prison.

Natalie had admitted her involvement.

The insurance company had recovered most of the stolen money.

My house was safe.

The cameras were gone.

The hidden speakers were gone.

The blue folder was secured as evidence.

And Mrs. Higgins no longer stood at my fence every afternoon, listening for a woman crying for help.

Life slowly returned to something resembling normal.

But normal was difficult after discovering that the man you had buried was alive.

I started sleeping with my bedroom door open.

I stopped taking sleeping medication.

I started walking in the mornings.

I even returned to work.

My coworkers knew something had happened, but I never told them every detail.

Some stories are too strange to explain without sounding like fiction.

Then, six weeks after Derek’s arrest, Detective Harris called me.

“Claire, I need you to come down to the station.”

My stomach tightened.

“Why?”

“We found something.”

“What?”

“I’d rather explain it in person.”

I drove there immediately.

When I entered the interrogation room, Detective Harris was sitting across from a cardboard evidence box.

He looked exhausted.

“What happened?”

He opened the box.

Inside was Derek’s old phone.

I stared at it.

“I thought you had already searched that.”

“We did.”

“So what’s different?”

“We recovered deleted data.”

He turned the phone toward me.

There were hundreds of messages.

Most were encrypted.

But one conversation had been recovered.

The recipient’s name was simply:

E.

I looked at him.

“Who is E?”

“We don’t know.”

He opened the messages.

The first one was dated four months before Derek’s supposed death.

Derek: She’s beginning to ask questions.

E: Then accelerate the plan.

Derek: I can’t disappear yet.

E: You don’t have a choice.

Then another.

Derek: Claire is more observant than you predicted.

E: That’s why the psychiatric file matters.

My skin prickled.

I kept reading.

Derek: Dr. Evans is getting nervous.

E: Keep him quiet.

I looked at the detective.

“Dr. Evans?”

He nodded.

“We’re investigating him.”

I felt sick.

HE BEST PART 7 IS NEXT 👇