Chapter 3 - The Room Behind The Wall.
The mansion went into lockdown within three minutes.
The ballroom became a holding area for people who were unaccustomed to being told they could not leave.
A venture capitalist demanded to speak to the governor.
A retired judge objected to having his coat searched.
An actress who had barely spoken during dinner began livestreaming until an officer ordered her to put away her phone.
Claire watched from the corridor and realized that fear stripped polish from wealthy people as quickly as it did from anyone else.
Rosa moved through them carrying water with a face that looked increasingly strained.
Claire stopped her near the pantry.
"Are you okay?"
Rosa gave a small laugh that contained no humor.
"I have worked in this house for fifteen years."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Rosa looked toward the ballroom doors.
"No."
Claire waited.
Rosa lowered her voice.
"When Mr.
Arthur was alive, staff learned not to notice things."
"What kinds of things?"
"Cars arriving after midnight."
"Arguments behind locked doors."
"Guests who came through the kitchen instead of the front entrance."
Claire thought of Daniel's final warning.
Do not trust anyone in the house.
"Why did you stay?"
Rosa's expression hardened defensively.
"Because my mother was sick and this job paid her medical bills."
Then her voice softened.
"And because leaving did not mean forgetting what I had seen."
Claire understood that answer better than Rosa knew.
Ethan approached from the foyer.
Rosa immediately stepped back into the posture of an employee.
He noticed.
"Rosa, you don't have to do that."
She looked at him.
"Do what, sir?"
Ethan had no answer.
Claire saw him register another small legacy of his father.
Blackwood House had taught everyone roles, and even now nobody quite knew how to stop performing them.
A crash sounded from the ballroom as one guest knocked over a chair while arguing with an officer.
Claire flinched involuntarily.
Ethan's attention snapped to her.
"Claire."
"I'm fine."
"You just jumped."
"I fell off your balcony an hour ago."
"Right."
He looked toward the marble floor beneath the chandelier.
His voice changed.
"When I saw you falling, I thought I was too far away."
Claire did not know what to do with that confession.
"But you weren't."
"No."
"So don't turn it into something worse than it was."
Ethan looked at her bruised shoulder.
"I'm not sure that's possible."
Before Claire could answer, Detective Cole called them toward the library and the hidden passage was discovered.
Police sealed the gates.
No guest was permitted to leave.
Every member of staff was gathered in the ballroom and searched by officers.
Detective Cole regained consciousness with a cut near her temple and no memory of who had struck her.
The missing memory card turned the evening from a family scandal into a criminal investigation.
Claire stood in the security corridor while paramedics checked Cole.
Ethan paced near the service door with anger radiating from him in controlled waves.
"Only staff know that door connects to the west pantry."
Rosa shook her head.
"Not only staff."
Ethan looked at her.
"Who else?"
"Mrs.
Blackwood."
Claire did not need to ask which Mrs.
Blackwood she meant.
Eleanor had spent decades managing the house.
She knew every hallway, key, and hidden entrance.
But Eleanor had been visible at the end of the corridor when the lights failed.
Unless she had an accomplice, she could not have attacked Cole herself.
Detective Cole sat up.
"Find the breaker panel."
An officer answered from the doorway.
"Already checked."
"And?"
"The outage was manual."
"From where?"
"Old maintenance room behind the library."
Ethan stopped pacing.
"There hasn't been a maintenance room behind the library since the renovation."
Rosa looked uncertain.
"Sir, there is still a door."
Ethan frowned.
"Where?"
Rosa led them back to Arthur Blackwood's library.
She moved a narrow bookcase beside the fireplace.
Behind it was a painted wooden panel almost invisible against the wall.
Ethan stared at it.
"I've lived here most of my life."
Rosa gave him a nervous glance.
"Your father told staff never to open it."
The brass key from Daniel's envelope suddenly felt heavy in Claire's handbag.
She removed it.
"Maybe this is why."
The key fit.
Ethan looked at her before turning it.
"Stay behind me."
Claire almost argued.
Then she remembered the balcony and stepped back.
The door opened into a narrow passage lined with exposed brick.
Dust covered the floor except for one fresh set of shoe prints.
The passage descended six steps and ended at a small room filled with obsolete electrical panels, old wine crates, and a metal desk.
The breaker switch for the east wing was still in the OFF position.
Ethan turned it back on.
Claire examined the floor.
The prints led past the electrical panel to another wall.
Then they stopped.
"That's strange."
Ethan ran his hand across the brick.
One section moved slightly.
He pushed harder.
A hidden door opened inward.
Cold air rushed through the gap.
Behind it was a room that did not appear on any modern blueprint of Blackwood House.
There was a narrow cot.
A sink.
A shelf containing canned food.
A medical kit.
And dozens of photographs taped to the walls.
Claire stepped inside.
Her breath caught.
The photographs were of her.
Claire leaving her apartment in New York.
Claire entering her office.
Claire buying coffee.
Claire at Martin Hale's funeral four weeks earlier.
Some images were years old.
Others had been taken within days.
Ethan's face hardened.
"Whoever used this room has been watching you."
Claire moved toward the desk.
A laptop charger was plugged into the wall, but the computer itself was gone.
Beside it sat a newspaper clipping about Daniel's death.
Someone had written across the headline in black ink.
HE WALKED AWAY.
Detective Cole arrived with two officers.
"Nobody touch anything."
She looked around the room and swore under her breath.
An officer photographed the walls.
Claire noticed a small framed picture facing downward on the shelf.
She pointed it out.
Cole lifted it with gloves.
The photograph showed Arthur Blackwood standing beside Daniel at a remote cabin.
A date stamp in the corner showed it had been taken eighteen months after Daniel's funeral.
Ethan stared at it.
"My father met him."
Claire's anger toward Ethan shifted uneasily.
If Arthur had been secretly meeting Daniel, perhaps Ethan truly had not known where his brother was.
Cole examined the back of the frame.
"There's writing."
She read it aloud.
"North Haven, October fourteen."
Ethan looked up.
"North Haven is an island off the Maine coast."
Claire remembered something.
"Your family owned land there."
"A hunting cabin."
"Does it still exist?"
"My father sold it before he died."
Cole looked at him.
"To whom?"
"I don't know."
A sound came from inside the wall.
Everyone froze.
A faint electronic beep repeated three times.
Cole followed it to an old vent.
An officer removed the metal cover.
Inside was a phone.
Not a modern smartphone.
A small prepaid device with one new text message on the screen.
Cole read it without touching the phone.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AWAY, CLAIRE.
Claire's skin turned cold.
Then another message appeared.
ETHAN WILL LIE TO YOU AGAIN.
Ethan looked at her.
"I didn't send that."
Claire believed him.
That frightened her more than if she had not.
A third message arrived.
ASK ROSA WHAT SHE SAW THE NIGHT DANIEL DIED.
Everyone turned toward the doorway.
Rosa stood there.
The color drained from her face.
"I didn't know anyone knew."
Claire approached her.
"Knew what?"
Rosa looked at Ethan and began to cry silently.
"I was nineteen."
"Rosa, what did you see?"
"Mr.
Daniel came to the kitchen after midnight."
Her hands trembled.
"He had blood on his shirt."
Ethan stepped closer.
"Whose blood?"
"I don't know."
"What happened?"
"Your father came in through the service entrance with another man."
"Who?"
Rosa hesitated.
Then she looked toward the library.
"Mr.
Mercer."
Claire felt her stomach drop.
Charles Mercer was Eleanor's attorney.
He was also downstairs at that very moment.
Rosa continued.
"They put Daniel in the back of a car."
Ethan's voice became dangerously quiet.
"Was he conscious?"
"Yes."
"Did he go willingly?"
Rosa shook her head.
"No."
The room fell silent.
Detective Cole immediately radioed officers to locate Mercer.
The reply came seconds later.
He was no longer in the ballroom.
His car was still outside.
The gates were locked.
Claire looked at the fresh shoe prints in the passage.
"He's still in the house."
Then every phone in the hidden room rang at the same time.
Claire looked down at the prepaid phone inside the vent.
Its screen displayed an incoming video call.
May you like
The caller ID contained only one name.
DANIEL.
