Chương 2
“Who was inside the house?” Adrian asked.
Daniel’s hand went still. “Household staff, the catering team, the florists, your office personnel, and the security rotation.”
“How many?”
“Forty-six, including us.”
“No one leaves.”
“Already ordered.”
“No phones surrendered yet,” Marcus said from the floor. “People will begin calling lawyers.”
“They can call whoever they like from inside the house.”
Isabelle released Sophie but kept one hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Adrian.”
He turned.
Her face had lost color. The scratch on her cheek looked darker beneath the chandelier. “The papers came from your private safe.”
Only four people knew the combination.
Adrian knew it. Isabelle knew it. His attorney, Leonard Shaw, had received it in a sealed emergency memorandum. Daniel knew it because he supervised the installation and maintained the estate’s security systems.
That fact moved through the room without being spoken.
Daniel’s face remained composed. “The safe records every access.”
“Does it?” Isabelle asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll have no objection to us checking.”
“None.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Adrian heard his own father’s voice then, not as a memory exactly but as a sensation along the back of his neck. Never accuse a man until you know what he gains from the accusation. His father had said it at breakfast after firing a groundskeeper for stealing diesel fuel, as though betrayal were a lesson best taught between coffee and grapefruit.
Adrian had been sixteen. He had admired the certainty.
Now he hated it.
“Marcus,” he said, “take control of the security system.”
Daniel’s expression changed so slightly that another man might have missed it. The lower eyelid tightened. The right shoulder eased back.
Marcus did not answer at once. He had worked under Daniel for six years. He had been hired by him, promoted by him, invited to his daughter’s wedding by him.
“Sir,” Marcus said carefully, “protocol places the security director in command during an internal lockdown.”
“I’m changing the protocol.”
Daniel looked at Marcus. “Follow the order.”
It sounded generous. It also sounded like a man placing his hands where everyone could see them.
Marcus removed his earpiece and crossed the marble floor toward the security office.
“Peter goes with you,” Adrian said. “Neither of you accesses anything alone.”
Peter nodded and followed.
Daniel stood beneath the chandelier with Adrian, Isabelle, and Sophie. He looked less like a suspect than any man Adrian had ever seen. He was fifty-two, broad through the chest, gray beginning at his temples. He had served with the Secret Service before entering private security. He sent handwritten notes after funerals. He remembered the names of drivers’ spouses and kitchen employees’ children. Every December, he brought Sophie a wooden ornament carved by his brother in Vermont.
Adrian had trusted him with routes, passwords, medical information, school schedules, and the details of every threat that money attracted.
“Where is everyone being held?” Adrian asked.
“Staff dining room for household employees. Ballroom for contractors and office personnel.”
“Held,” Isabelle repeated.
Daniel glanced at her. “For their safety as much as ours.”
“Don’t say ours.”
The first crack in her composure appeared on the last word.
Sophie looked up at her.
Isabelle closed her eyes briefly and smoothed the pink tulle at her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“We need a doctor,” Adrian said.
“I don’t need a doctor.”
“You were locked underground.”
“I was down there for forty minutes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I heard the west hall clock strike four, and I heard it again before you found me.”
Adrian looked at the clock mounted beyond the staircase. It was sixteen minutes past five.
“You were missing longer than that.”
“I wasn’t in the passage the whole time.”
He waited.
Isabelle’s hand tightened on Sophie’s shoulder. “I was in your study first. Someone came in behind me.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see.”
“Did they touch you?”
“No.” She looked toward Sophie. “I heard the door. Then something pressed over my face.”
Adrian felt the room narrow.
“I woke up below,” she continued. “My wrists weren’t tied. Nothing was taken except my phone. The envelope was beside me.”
Daniel spoke for the first time since Marcus had left. “That suggests the objective wasn’t abduction.”
Isabelle’s eyes moved to him. “What does it suggest?”
“That someone wanted time.”
“For what?”
“To retrieve whatever you found. Alter records. Leave the property.”
“The property is sealed,” Adrian said.
Daniel nodded. “Assuming they haven’t already left.”
Again, the answer was reasonable.
Again, Adrian disliked how quickly it came.
A service door opened across the hall, and Mrs. Weller, the house manager, appeared with a folded blanket. Her white blouse was untucked on one side, a condition Adrian had never seen in fourteen years. She took three steps toward Isabelle before noticing the men’s faces.
“May I?”
Isabelle nodded.
Mrs. Weller wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. She did not ask what had happened. She bent to Sophie instead and said, “There’s cocoa in the morning room.”
“I don’t want cocoa.”
“I made it badly.”
Sophie considered this.
“Too much chocolate,” Mrs. Weller said. “Almost irresponsible.”
“I’m staying with Mom.”
“Of course.”
Mrs. Weller straightened and met Adrian’s eyes. She looked frightened and annoyed with herself for being frightened.
“Everyone is asking questions,” she said. “The florist has a six-month-old at home. One of the caterers is diabetic and left his insulin in his truck. Mr. Shaw is in the blue sitting room. He says he arrived for the trust meeting and has no idea why the gates closed.”
Leonard Shaw was inside the house.
Adrian looked at Isabelle.
She understood immediately.
“The meeting was supposed to be at six,” she said.
Adrian checked his watch. “He came early.”
“He always comes late.”
Daniel’s gaze shifted toward the blue sitting room.
For the first time, suspicion had somewhere else to go.
Adrian asked Mrs. Weller to take Sophie upstairs, but Sophie gripped Isabelle’s hand with both of hers.
May you like
“No.”
Her voice was not loud. It did not need to be.
