For One Hundred Seven Nights, He Stopped Outside Her Door and Said Nothing

“What’s your number?”

“Three.”

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“South service corridor.”

Raphael removed the gold ring from Elena’s robe pocket. For a second she thought he meant to keep it. Instead, he slid it onto her thumb, the only finger it would not immediately fall from.

“Do not let Dominic see that,” he said.

“Because he’ll know I’m helping you?”

“Because he’ll cut off your hand.”

Pike looked at him. “You could have led with that.”

Raphael’s eyes stayed on Elena. “If you hear anyone coming, take the ring off and drop it. The floors are old. It will roll toward the baseboards.”

“That is your plan?”

“It has worked for my family since they stole it.”

The admission was so unexpected that Pike made a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh.

Elena did not smile.

Before she entered the dumbwaiter shaft, she turned to Raphael.

“If I come back and you are unconscious, I’m calling from the first phone I find.”

He nodded.

“If I come back and you have disappeared—”

“I won’t.”

“You have a history of disappearing from doors.”

A faint movement crossed his face. It might have been pain.

“I’ll be here.”

The dumbwaiter platform had been removed, leaving a vertical shaft with iron maintenance rungs. Elena climbed two floors in shoes that shifted beneath her heels. Dust caught in her throat. At the top, a narrow service hatch opened behind a velvet curtain in the music room.

She waited.

Voices carried from the adjoining study.

Dominic Orsini spoke first. Elena recognized him from dinners: forty-one, elegant, handsome in a manner that required an audience. He wore expensive glasses he did not need and touched people’s elbows while talking to them.

“We can’t announce an overdose before we have him.”

A woman answered. “You can announce concern. The language matters.”

The junior attorney, Elena guessed.

Vale said, “We’ll have him.”

His voice sounded exactly as it had on the phone. Calm. Almost considerate.

“Pike hasn’t reported,” Dominic said.

“Pike has a sick son and a mortgage.”

“So?”

“So he has reasons to return to good judgment.”

A chair moved.

Elena slipped from behind the curtain.

The music room was dark except for light entering from the study through double pocket doors. A grand piano occupied the center, its black lid reflecting the chandelier. Portraits of dead Orsinis watched from the walls with the grim endurance of people who had paid to be remembered.

The safe lay behind a carved panel near the floor.

Elena crossed the carpet quietly. The ring tapped once against the steel key in her palm. She froze.

No one in the study stopped talking.

The outer panel opened after she pressed the second carved bass leaf. Behind it sat a square steel door. She inserted the key.

The lock turned.

Inside were two ledgers bound in black leather, a sealed envelope, a small drive, three passports, and a pistol.

Elena ignored the pistol. She put the drive and envelope inside Pike’s jacket. The ledgers were too large.

From the study, the attorney said, “I’m not putting my name on a medical statement without a doctor.”

Dominic replied, “Your name will be on the filing, not the statement.”

“My firm will ask questions.”

“Your firm asks whatever it is paid to ask.”

The woman’s chair scraped back.

“Then pay someone else.”

Elena heard footsteps.

She closed the safe, but the brass panel would not latch. The ring had to be turned from the outside to reset the spring. She pushed it once, twice. It stayed open by half an inch.

The attorney entered the music room.

She was younger than Elena had expected, perhaps thirty, with straight black hair cut at the jaw and a legal pad held against her chest. For one second, both women stood still.

The attorney’s gaze moved over Pike’s oversized jacket, the rolled sleeves, the bare strip of nightgown beneath it, and Raphael’s shoes.

Elena put a finger to her lips.

The attorney’s eyes shifted to the open safe.

Vale called from the study, “Ms. Chen?”

The woman looked toward his voice.

Elena prepared to run.

Ms. Chen bent, picked up a sheet of music from the floor, and placed it on the piano.

“I’m looking for my phone,” she said.

“It’s on the study table,” Vale answered.

“Right.”

She walked past Elena, close enough that Elena smelled peppermint.

At the doorway, Ms. Chen paused without turning.

“The north hall is empty for maybe forty seconds,” she murmured.

Then she returned to the study.

Elena used the ring. The panel clicked shut.

She crossed toward the library through the narrow connecting hall. Halfway there, the earpiece whispered to life.

“Post Three, report.”

Vale.

Elena pressed the transmitter twice.

“South corridor clear,” she said, lowering her voice.

Silence.

Then Vale asked, “Pike, where is your earpiece?”

Elena ran.

She entered the library as the alarm began—not the house alarm, but a low electronic pulse transmitted through every guard’s earpiece. Doors opened along the main corridor. Men shouted positions.

The library desk stood beneath three tall windows shaking with rain.

Elena reached under the west side and found the brass depression. The ring fit exactly. She turned it.

A drawer opened.

Inside lay no key.

She stared at the empty velvet groove.

Raphael had said a key marked with a number. Either someone had taken it, or he had lied, or he had not known the drawer had been searched.

The library door handle moved.

Elena dropped the ring.

It struck the hardwood and rolled beneath a bookcase.

The door opened. A guard entered, broad through the chest, his flashlight raised.

Elena crawled under the desk.

The guard’s beam crossed the carpet. “Library.”