Chapter 4 - The Hidden TransmitterAdrian did not look at Evelyn.
He looked at me.
“Take Nora to the cellar.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are not leaving me. You are keeping our daughter alive.”
The word our hung between us.
He had said it without thinking, but I heard it. So did Marcus.
Nora clutched the photograph of James. “Mommy, who is the lady?”
“Someone who wants to hurt us.”
Adrian took the black notebook and silver key from the metal box.
“The cellar,” he repeated.
I pulled Nora toward the rear hallway. Porter followed, weapon drawn. Marcus remained beside Adrian.
“Do you trust your right hand?” I whispered.
He heard me.
His eyes moved to Marcus.
“I trusted him with my life,” Adrian said.
“That wasn’t what James wrote.”
“James had reasons to be suspicious.”
“Did he?”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “Go.”
The cellar was beneath the kitchen. It smelled of damp earth and old paint. Porter found a narrow alcove behind stacked crates and pushed me inside with Nora.
“Stay here until I tell you,” she said.
“What about Adrian?”
“He is a grown man who chose this life.”
“And Nora?”
Porter’s expression softened. “She did not.”
Above us, the front door opened.
Evelyn’s voice echoed through the house.
“You always did enjoy dramatic entrances, Adrian.”
“You brought explosives to a home with a child inside.”
“You brought the child into the conflict. I am simply acknowledging the stakes.”
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“I don’t have it.”
“James gave it to Clara.”
“James is dead.”
“That is why I am asking the living.”
Nora pressed against me. I covered her ears, but she still heard the voices.
“Who is the right hand?” she whispered.
I shook my head.
Above us, glass shattered.
Then a gunshot.
Nora flinched. I held her tightly, fighting the urge to run upstairs. Every part of me wanted to know whether Adrian was alive. Every part of me knew that if I left the alcove, I could lead danger directly to Nora.
Porter signaled for silence.
Footsteps moved across the kitchen.
A man spoke. “Search the house.”
Not Evelyn. A stranger.
Another voice answered, “The cellar first.”
Porter pointed toward a second door at the back of the alcove. She eased it open and found a passage leading beneath the garden. We crawled through the mud while footsteps approached from the other side of the wall.
The passage ended at a storm drain outside the property. Rainwater rushed around our ankles. Porter helped Nora through first, then pulled me after her.
We emerged behind a row of abandoned garages.
“Where is Adrian?” I asked.
Porter listened to her earpiece. Her face changed.
“The house is on fire.”
My knees weakened.
Before I could move, headlights swept over the garages. A black sedan stopped twenty feet away.
Marcus stepped out.
His coat was torn, and blood ran down his cheek.
“Get in,” he said.
I pulled Nora behind me. “Where is Adrian?”
“He stayed behind.”
“You left him?”
“He ordered me to take you.”
“Did he?”
Marcus looked toward Porter. “Detective, if you want him alive, we need to move.”
Porter raised her weapon. “Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
The honesty stopped her.
Marcus looked at me. “But if I wanted the child, I would have taken her before you reached the drain.”
I hated that his logic made sense.
We got into the sedan.
Marcus drove without turning on the radio. Nora sat between Porter and me, shivering beneath my coat.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A safe house.”
“Whose?”
“James’s.”
“I thought the blue house was James’s safe house.”
“That was the one he wanted people to find.”
I looked at the black notebook in Marcus’s hand. “What did he hide?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were Adrian’s right hand.”
“That does not mean James trusted me.”
“Did Adrian?”
Marcus kept his eyes on the road. “Once.”
The safe house was a small farmhouse outside Worcester. It had boarded windows, a generator, and a kitchen stocked with food for emergencies. Marcus checked every room before allowing us inside.
Porter made coffee. I changed Nora into dry clothes while she asked the same question again and again.
“Where is Uncle Adrian?”
I had no answer.
Marcus opened the black notebook at the kitchen table.
Most pages were blank. The few that contained writing were filled with numbers, initials, and dates. On the final page, James had written a single sentence.
THE TRUTH IS NOT IN THE LEDGER. THE TRUTH IS WHO FEARS IT.
“That is not helpful,” Porter said.
“James rarely wrote anything directly,” I replied.
Marcus studied me. “What did he tell you about the ledger?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he tell you about Adrian?”
“That he was not as heartless as people believed.”
Marcus gave a humorless smile. “He believed that until the week he died.”
“Why?”
“Because Adrian ordered a man named Victor Sloane to disappear.”
Porter stopped stirring her coffee. “Sloane is a banker.”
“He is a banker who launders money for half the families in Boston.”
“Why would Adrian target him?” I asked.
“Because Sloane had been selling information about the Cole routes.”
“Did James know?”
“James discovered it.”
I remembered James coming to the farmhouse once, weeks before his death. He had been restless, constantly checking the windows.
“He said someone was moving money through Adrian’s company,” I said. “He thought Adrian did not know.”
Marcus looked up. “He was right.”
“Then why would Adrian kill him?”
“Maybe he didn’t.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Everyone froze.
Porter raised her gun. Marcus stepped in front of Nora. I pulled my daughter close.
The door at the end of the hall opened slowly.
Adrian walked into the kitchen.
His shirt was torn. Smoke darkened one side of his face. He had a bullet crease along his shoulder, but he was alive.
Nora ran to him.
He caught her before she reached the table and lifted her into his arms.
“Uncle Adrian!”
His eyes closed briefly as he held her.
I saw the moment his control broke.
He pressed his cheek against her hair.
“I’m here,” he whispered.
Then he looked at me.
“Evelyn escaped.”
“Did she have the ledger?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
Adrian’s gaze lowered to the black notebook.
“James never had the ledger.”
He set Nora down and removed a small brass key from his pocket.
“He had the key to the person who did.”
The farmhouse lights flickered.
Every phone in the room began ringing at once.
Marcus checked his screen. His face went pale.
“What is it?” I asked.
He turned the phone toward us.
There was a live video feed from the Cole mansion.
The dining room was filled with smoke.
On the table, written in black ink, were four words:
BRING ME JAMES’S DAUGHTER.
Beneath the message lay a photograph of Nora sleeping in my arms.
The picture had been taken inside the farmhouse ten minutes earlier.
Marcus returned from the basement with a second device in his hand. It was identical to the camera, except this one had no lens.
“A transmitter,” he said.
Adrian took it from him. “It has been listening to us.”
“For how long?” Porter asked.
Marcus checked the battery. “At least an hour.”
I felt sick. Every word we had spoken in the farmhouse might already belong to someone else.
“Then they know about the blue house,” I said.
“They knew before we arrived,” Adrian replied.
Nora reached for the black notebook. “Daddy’s book.”
Adrian hesitated, then handed it to her.
She flipped through the blank pages until she reached the middle. A small drawing had been made in purple crayon: four windows, a crooked roof, and a red door beneath the floor.
“I drew that,” she said.
“When?” I asked.
“Daddy’s house.”
Adrian knelt beside her. “Did James show you the red door?”
“He said it was sleeping.”
“What wakes it?”
Nora tapped the picture. “Two keys and a secret.”
Marcus looked toward Adrian.
“We have one key.”
I remembered the words James had written in the watch.
The woman with my child.
“Maybe the secret is not in the house,” I said. “Maybe it is in Nora.”
Adrian’s expression sharpened.
Outside, tires moved across the gravel.
Someone had found us again.
Adrian moved toward the kitchen window, but I caught his sleeve.
“Do not look directly at the glass.”
He stopped. “Why?”
“If someone is watching, they want to know whether we are afraid.”
“We are afraid.”
“They do not need to know.”
Nora climbed onto a chair and pressed her nose against the wall.
“The red door is under the floor,” she said.
Porter crouched beside her. “How do you know?”
“Daddy showed me with his finger.”
She traced a small square on the wood.
Adrian knelt and followed the shape. Beneath the boards, something clicked.
Everyone froze.
He looked at me.
“James planned for her to find this.”
“Then he trusted her memory more than ours.”
Adrian slipped a knife beneath the board and lifted it. A thin red thread ran through the opening, disappearing beneath the kitchen floor.
The thread pulsed once, like a warning.
Porter raised her weapon.
“We are not waiting to see what happens next.”
Adrian took Nora into his arms.
“Everyone out through the back.”
May you like
The thread pulsed again.
Then the farmhouse windows began to glow red.
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