Chương 3
Isabelle knelt again. “I need to speak with Dad.”
“I won’t talk.”
“That isn’t the problem.”
“I can be quiet.”
Adrian watched his daughter attempt to negotiate her way out of fear. He recognized the instinct. He had spent most of his adult life turning emotion into terms.
“Mom will come upstairs in ten minutes,” he said.
Sophie looked at him. “Exactly?”
He almost promised. Then he saw the open cellar door behind her.
“As close as we can,” he said.
She hated the answer. It showed in the small downward pull at the corner of her mouth.
Mrs. Weller offered her hand. Sophie ignored it and walked beside her toward the stairs. Halfway up, she turned.
“Don’t close the door.”
Adrian followed her gaze to the square opening in the floor.
“We won’t,” he said.
After she disappeared along the upper gallery, Isabelle lowered herself onto the cream settee beside the windows. The blanket slipped from one shoulder. Adrian bent to replace it, but she caught the edge first.
“I can do it.”
He straightened.
Daniel looked toward the blue sitting room. “Mr. Vale, I recommend we separate Shaw before he has contact with anyone else.”
“You recommend.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you know where I was when the door opened?”
The question came from Isabelle.
Daniel turned back.
“You were in the east garden with Sophie,” she said. “Adrian was supposed to be at the boathouse. The concealed door has no alarm. Yet you were in the entrance hall less than a minute after he found me.”
“The chandelier camera covers the hall.”
“The chandelier camera hasn’t worked in months.”
A silence opened between them.
Adrian looked up. The camera was hidden inside the bronze canopy above the crystal tiers. He had forgotten it existed.
Daniel did not.
“It was serviced last week,” he said.
“By whom?”
“My team.”
“Was it recording this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Then show us.”
Daniel’s jaw shifted once. “Marcus will retrieve it.”
Isabelle’s eyes stayed on him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I saw Mr. Vale enter the hall through the west camera. When he stopped, I came in.”
“You said the chandelier camera.”
“I said it covers the hall.”
“You implied you saw the door open.”
“I did not.”
The exchange was controlled enough to pass for polite disagreement. Adrian heard the pressure beneath it.
He also heard something else: Isabelle was not asking because she believed Daniel guilty. She was testing whether his account changed under resistance.
He had underestimated that part of her for years.
Not her intelligence. Never that. He had underestimated her willingness to distrust people he had already approved.
The blue sitting room door opened before anyone called for Leonard Shaw. He stepped into the hall carrying a leather portfolio and wearing the offended expression of a man delayed by other people’s emergencies. He was sixty-eight, narrow-shouldered, silver-haired, and dressed in a charcoal suit that had probably cost more than the first house Adrian remembered living in.
“What in God’s name is happening?” Leonard asked.
Then he saw Isabelle.
His annoyance vanished.
He took in the blanket, the scratch, the open door, and Daniel standing beneath the chandelier. His eyes went to the envelope below.
“Oh,” he said.
It was a small sound. Too small.
Adrian walked toward him. “Why are you here early?”
Leonard blinked. “For the meeting.”
“At six.”
“I wanted to review the language with you beforehand.”
“You’ve never arrived early in your life.”
“This is hardly the time for humor.”
“Who told you there was revised language?”
Leonard’s fingers closed around the handle of his portfolio.
Isabelle rose from the settee. “I found an amended trust in Adrian’s safe. It shifts control of Vale family assets to North Harbor Stewardship if Adrian becomes incapacitated.”
Leonard stared at her.
“That document does not exist,” he said.
“I held it.”
“No valid amendment says that.”
“I didn’t say valid.”
Leonard’s gaze flickered to Adrian. “Where is it?”
“In the cellar.”
“No,” Isabelle said. “The envelope is in the cellar.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I removed the papers before I left the study.”
Adrian felt a pulse of hope and dread in equal measure. “Where are they?”
“I hid them.”
Leonard stepped forward. “Isabelle, this is important. Where?”
She looked at his hand on the portfolio, then at his face.
“I’m not telling you.”
He stopped.
Daniel said, “That may be wise until we establish who has access.”
Leonard turned on him. “You establish access. That is what Adrian pays you to do.”
“And you establish authentic documents.”
“I do not need a lecture from hired security.”
Daniel’s expression remained level, but the word hired landed.
Adrian had watched men with money use that word for employees they depended on. His father had done it when afraid. Leonard had done it at least twice that Adrian could remember, both times when someone questioned his authority.
“Leonard,” Adrian said, “put the portfolio on the table.”
The attorney looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Set it down.”
“This contains privileged material.”
“So does my safe.”
Leonard’s mouth flattened. For a second, he seemed prepared to refuse. Then he placed the portfolio on the marble-topped console beneath a vase of white roses.
Daniel moved toward it.
“Not you,” Adrian said.
He saw the reaction this time. Not fear. Hurt.
Daniel stepped back.
Mrs. Weller returned alone, walking more quickly than her dignity usually allowed. “Sophie is with her tutor. She made me promise the door would remain open.”
“It stays open,” Isabelle said.
Mrs. Weller glanced into the cellar, shivered, and turned away.
“Would you bring Marcus and Peter?” Adrian asked. “And ask the kitchen to send food to the ballroom. Also retrieve the caterer’s insulin from his truck under escort.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Weller said, with the faintest trace of rebuke.
May you like
It struck Adrian that thirty-nine people were being confined in rooms because he did not know whom to trust, and he had not thought to feed them.
His father would have called that irrelevant.
