Part 4
“The event manager requested access between the conservatory and the service wing.”
“The west terrace is not the service wing.”
“I know the geography of my own house.”
“Then explain why every system protecting it was disabled.”
“I cannot.”
“Cannot or will not?”
Sloane pressed the receiver to her ear.
The line had gone quiet.
“Dad.”
Gideon turned.
“The connection’s dead.”
He crossed the foyer and took the receiver from her hand carefully. The bandage remained caught around it for a moment before slipping free. He listened.
No dial tone.
He pressed the cradle twice.
Nothing.
Celia looked toward the ceiling.
“Someone cut the line.”
“No,” Gideon said. “The call would have ended earlier.”
“Then they disconnected it from the exchange.”
“From inside the house?”
“Or the service room.”
The service room lay beyond the kitchen corridor. To reach it from the foyer, someone would have to pass the main staircase or use the narrow back hall behind the library.
Gideon set the receiver on the floor instead of returning it to its cradle.
“Did you hear footsteps after the call?” he asked.
Sloane tried to separate what she had heard from what she feared she had heard.
“The doors opening.”
“Before us.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Upstairs?”
“Maybe.”
Celia looked toward the staircase.
The upper landing remained dark except for a brass wall lamp near the sitting room. The carpet there absorbed sound. Anyone standing behind the balustrade could see most of the foyer without being seen from below.
Gideon moved to the first stair.
Sloane said his name.
He stopped.
“Don’t leave this room.”
“I’m not waiting for him to walk down.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find him.”
“With what?”
Her father looked at his empty hands.
His black tuxedo, polished shoes, and careful white pocket square belonged to a room where authority could be summoned by a glance. Here, with no staff answering and no phone working, they looked like parts of a costume he had forgotten how to remove.
“He may want you upstairs,” Sloane said.
Gideon looked toward the dark landing.
Celia moved beside him. “She’s right.”
“You told me we had to leave.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You do that when the first position becomes difficult.”
“And you remain committed to bad positions until other people pay for them.”
Their voices remained controlled. That made the hostility between them clearer.
Sloane had grown up watching them disagree politely. Gideon reduced his volume. Celia refined her grammar. By the time the argument ended, no one could quote an insult, but the room felt stripped of oxygen.
Tonight they lacked the energy for refinement.
Gideon turned back toward Sloane. “Did the man search you?”
She remembered gloved hands pulling at the folds of her gown, the pressure of a knee against the marble near her hip, the smell of rosemary from the spilled drink.
She remembered protecting her bandaged hand against her chest.
“Yes.”
“Did he take your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Your bag?”
“It’s near the terrace.”
“Jewelry?”
“No.”
“So he wanted the letter.”
“And the second copy.”
“What second copy?”
“The one Adrian mentioned.”
Gideon’s stare narrowed. “You said the other copy was given to someone.”
“I think the attacker believes it was returned to the house.”
“Why?”
“Because he asked where I hid it.”
“That means he thought you already had it.”
“He may think I’m the person Adrian trusted.”
Celia shook her head. “Adrian would not have given you something that dangerous.”
Sloane looked at her.
“Why?”
“You were twenty-four.”
“I was his sister.”
“You were leaving for London.”
“For two months.”
“You told him you wanted distance from the family.”
“That might have made me exactly the person he trusted.”
Celia looked away.
Gideon stepped down from the staircase.
“What did you put behind your bandage?”
Sloane’s pulse changed.
Celia stared at the white wrapping.
“I didn’t put anything there,” Sloane said.
“You used your injured hand to grip the telephone even though it hurt,” Gideon said. “You have held it against your body since we arrived. He searched your gown and took your bag, but you still believe you saved something.”
“Stop watching me like a negotiation.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
He crouched near her again.
“No,” he said. “They aren’t.”
His voice had changed. It contained no command now, only fatigue.
“Sloane, if you have something he wants, he may come back. I need to know what it is.”
She looked at Celia.
Her mother stood between the foyer and library, close enough to hear, far enough to run.
“What did Adrian say on the recording?” Sloane asked.
Celia’s fingers rose to the pearls again.
“You heard what I heard.”
“You played seven seconds.”
“There were only seven seconds.”
“You said the recording ended.”
“It did.”
“Was there anything before his voice?”
Celia hesitated.
Gideon saw it.
“What was before it?” he asked.
“A piano.”
Sloane felt the room shift.
“What song?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do,” Gideon said.
Celia looked at him. “The piece he played at your fiftieth birthday.”
Gideon’s face hardened again.
Adrian had played one piece in public that year, an arrangement he had written himself from an old folk melody. He performed it badly after three glasses of wine, stopped halfway, laughed, and started again. The family recording had never been released. It remained on a private server maintained by Mercer security.
Martin Keene had supervised that server.
Sloane pulled a shallow breath.
“The recording came from inside the family archive.”
“Or someone copied it years ago,” Gideon said.
“Keene had access,” Celia replied.
“You are very eager for it to be Keene.”
“You wanted a name.”
“I want the right one.”
“And if it is him?”
Gideon looked toward the open doors. “Then he made a mistake coming here.”
Celia gave a brief, bitter laugh.
Sloane had never heard that sound from her mother.
May you like
“What?” Gideon asked.
“You still think people come into this house because they underestimate you.”
