Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS NUMBER FORTY-ONEI sat inside my car for nearly ten minutes, staring at the anonymous message.
NUMBER 41 ENDED UP IN THE HOSPITAL.
NUMBER 73 NEVER CAME HOME.
Rain streamed down the windshield, turning the hospital entrance into a gray blur.
My first instinct was to dismiss it.
The internet loved drama.
Thousands of strangers were already commenting on my humiliation. Somebody could easily have invented a darker story just to make it worse.
Then the account sent one photograph.
It showed the same whiteboard I had seen inside VIP 301.
But it was older.
Only fifty-two numbers were listed.
Beside number 41:
MADISON REED — CHEATING GIRLFRIEND — ELEVATOR PANIC.
Underneath someone had drawn a laughing face.
I took screenshots of everything.
Then I called Natalie.
She answered instantly.
“Tell me where you are. I’m coming.”
“I need you to do something first.”
“No. You need someone with you.”
“Natalie.”
She heard something in my voice.
“What?”
“Search the name Madison Reed with Ryan Bennett.”
Keys clicked.
“Okay.”
I waited.
Then Natalie stopped typing.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“There was an incident two years ago at the Hawthorne Center downtown. Woman hospitalized after an elevator malfunction.”
“Name?”
“Madison Reed.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
“The article says she had a severe panic attack and fell while trying to force open the elevator doors.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“There’s more.”
Natalie kept reading.
“She accused several men of trapping her inside as a prank, but police said there wasn’t enough evidence.”
I looked toward the hospital doors.
Ryan and his friends were nowhere in sight.
“Send me the article.”
“Emma, what are you doing?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then don’t do it alone.”
Twenty minutes later Natalie pulled into the parking garage.
She climbed into my passenger seat, took one look at me, and hugged me so hard my shoulder hurt.
That was when I finally cried.
Not because of the video.
Not even because Ryan had lied.
I cried because eleven months of memories had become contaminated all at once.
Every kiss now had a question attached.
Every promise had an audience I hadn’t known existed.
Natalie let me cry until I stopped.
Then she handed me tissues.
“I’m going to say something you’ll hate.”
“What?”
“Do not contact him.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I know you. You want answers.”
“I want the laptop.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
I showed her the messages.
Her expression changed.
“Okay. That’s bad.”
“I need to know whether it’s true.”
“Then we find Madison.”
We didn’t have to search long.
Madison Reed ran a small photography studio forty minutes outside the city.
Her business website listed an email address.
I sent one sentence:
My name is Emma Brooks. Ryan Bennett called me Revenge Number 96 today. Were you Number 41?
She replied eight minutes later.
WHERE ARE YOU?
We met at a coffee shop in a quiet suburb.
Madison arrived wearing a tan coat and carrying a camera bag.
She was about thirty, with dark curly hair and a thin scar across her chin.
She didn’t sit immediately.
“You’re really his girlfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly.
“Good.”
She sat.
Natalie remained beside me.
I explained what happened.
Madison listened without interrupting.
When I showed her the screenshot, her face went pale.
“Where did you get that?”
“Anonymous account.”
She stared at the old whiteboard photograph.
“I haven’t seen this in two years.”
“What happened in the elevator?”
Madison wrapped both hands around her coffee.
“I dated Mason.”
The name landed heavily.
“Mason was in the room today.”
“I figured.”
She swallowed.
“I found out he’d been seeing another woman. I broke up with him at a party. Apparently that embarrassed him.”
“So they planned revenge.”
“They knew I was claustrophobic.”
My skin prickled.
Madison looked toward the window.
“They invited me to a job interview in the Hawthorne Center. Fake email. Fake company. Fake recruiter.”
My chest tightened.
“They got me into an elevator, stopped it between floors somehow, killed the lights, and played a recording saying there was a fire in the shaft.”
Natalie whispered, “Jesus.”
Madison’s eyes glistened.
“I believed I was going to burn alive.”
She tried to pry apart the doors.
When she couldn’t, she began screaming.
After twenty-three minutes, they restarted the elevator.
“When the doors opened, six guys were standing there recording me.”
“Ryan?”
She nodded.
“He was holding one of the cameras.”
I felt sick.
“I collapsed. Hit my chin. Needed stitches.”
“Did police investigate?”
“Yes. But the building’s camera footage was mysteriously unavailable. They all said the elevator had malfunctioned and they happened to be there.”
“What about their recordings?”
“Gone.”
“Or hidden.”
Madison looked directly at me.
“Ryan keeps everything.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the account existed back then. Different name. Private server. Guys paid subscriptions to watch the full videos.”
My mind flashed back to the laptop.
96REVENGES.
“How many people?”
“Hundreds at first. Maybe thousands later.”
Natalie asked, “Why didn’t anyone expose them?”
“We tried.”
“We?”
Madison’s gaze dropped.
“Other victims.”
She named three.
A teacher whose classroom had been vandalized and made to look like she had done it herself.
A restaurant manager falsely accused online of stealing tips.
A college student tricked into believing his dog had been killed.
“Ryan calls them morality pranks,” Madison said. “He tells himself everybody deserves it.”
“Who decides what they deserve?”
“Ryan.”
My stomach turned.
“What about seventy-three?”
Madison’s face went still.
“Who told you about seventy-three?”
“The anonymous account.”
She lowered her voice.
“Her name was Lily Grant.”
“What happened?”
“She worked for Ryan’s father.”
“What did she do?”
“According to Ryan? She reported financial irregularities at Bennett Capital.”
That sounded painfully familiar.
“What prank?”
“I don’t know exactly. The group went quiet after it happened.”
“Did she disappear?”
Madison nodded.
“Six months ago.”
“Police?”
“Missing-person report. No body. No confirmed crime.”
Natalie leaned forward.
“Are you saying Ryan had something to do with her disappearance?”
“I’m saying Lily was listed as Number 73. Then she vanished. After that, Ryan removed dozens of old videos and changed the account name.”
My phone buzzed.
Ryan.
Another message.
PLEASE TALK TO ME BEFORE YOU BELIEVE WHATEVER PEOPLE ARE TELLING YOU.
Then:
THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DESTROY MY FAMILY FOR YEARS.
Madison read the preview upside down.
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That you’re talking to somebody.”
I looked around the coffee shop.
Nobody seemed interested in us.
Then Natalie noticed a black SUV across the street.
It had been there since we arrived.
Madison stood immediately.
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“That’s Evan’s car.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
We went out through the rear exit.
Before leaving, Madison grabbed my wrist.
“Emma.”
“What?”
“If you really saw their laptop today, they’re going to assume you saw more than you did.”
“Good.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“You don’t understand them yet.”
She looked terrified.
“Ryan doesn’t panic when people hate him.”
“What makes him panic?”
“When people have proof.”
That evening, I went straight to my apartment with Natalie.
I changed the locks digitally, disabled Ryan’s access code, and backed up every screenshot to three places.
At 9:16 p.m., somebody knocked.
We froze.
Another knock.
“Emma?”
Ryan.
Natalie whispered, “Don’t answer.”
He knocked again.
“I know you’re in there.”
I opened the security app on my phone.
Ryan stood outside holding a cardboard box.
“I brought your things,” he called.
I didn’t move.
Then he said something that made my blood run cold.
“You met Madison.”
Natalie looked at me.
Ryan leaned closer to the door.
“She didn’t tell you everything.”
Silence.
“She never does.”
Then he placed the box outside my apartment.
“I’m leaving.”
His footsteps disappeared.
We waited ten minutes.
Twenty.
Finally, Natalie opened the door while I watched through the camera.
The box contained clothes, books, a toothbrush, and photographs from Ryan’s apartment.
On top was an envelope.
Inside were two things.
A handwritten note:
THEY ARE USING YOU.
And a photograph.
Madison Reed standing beside Lily Grant.
The picture appeared to have been taken only a few weeks earlier.
But Lily had supposedly been missing for six months.
May you like
On the back, Ryan had written:
ASK MADISON WHY NUMBER 73 IS STILL ALIVE.
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