Chapter 8 - The House That Obeyed Him
Emergency lights flickered on.
Adrian rushed to the steel door and pulled the handle.
Locked.
Caleb tried the electronic panel.
The screen displayed a countdown.
Nine minutes and forty-seven seconds.
“What happens when it reaches zero?” Emma asked.
Jonah examined the ventilation system.
“I do not know.”
Adrian called the officers upstairs.
No signal.
The underground room was shielded.
Grant had known the room existed.
He had waited until they were all inside before taking control of the estate’s security system.
Caleb searched the walls for another exit.
Emma returned to the chair at the center of the room.
The heater beside it was warm. A cup of coffee sat on the floor.
Someone had left in a hurry.
She looked beneath the chair and found a small voice recorder attached to the frame.
She pressed play.
Her father’s voice filled the room.
“Emma, if you are hearing this, Grant has activated the containment system.”
Emma closed her eyes.
It was Thomas.
Older and weaker, but unmistakable.
“The door cannot be opened electronically once the countdown begins,” the recording continued. “The manual release is inside the original Vale ledger. Adrian will know which year.”
Adrian looked toward the shelves.
“The company was founded in 1978.”
Caleb found the ledger.
A metal key had been carved into the spine.
Adrian inserted it into a concealed opening beside the door.
Nothing happened.
Thomas’s recording continued.
“The key only works when both beneficiaries confirm their identities.”
A small panel opened.
Two fingerprint scanners appeared.
Emma and Adrian pressed their hands against them.
Access denied.
“Why?” Emma asked.
Adrian looked at the scanner.
“The system requires the fingerprints registered when the agreement was created. We were children.”
The countdown reached seven minutes.
Jonah searched the files.
“There must be another method.”
Emma replayed the message.
The original Vale ledger.
Not the company ledger.
She examined the book Adrian had chosen.
The cover read Vale Group.
“That is not the original name,” she said.
Adrian understood.
His grandfather’s first company had been called Vale and Hart Machinery.
Caleb searched the shelves again and found a thin ledger hidden behind the larger books.
Inside were two preserved fingerprint cards.
One belonged to Adrian.
The other belonged to Emma.
Their prints had been taken when they were children.
Emma felt sick.
“They registered us in this system before we could understand what it was.”
Adrian placed the cards against the scanners.
The door unlocked.
The countdown stopped at four minutes and twelve seconds.
They ran upstairs.
The estate was empty.
Richard, Vivian, and Grant were gone.
So were the officers who had been guarding them.
Adrian reached the entrance hall and found two officers unconscious but breathing near the security room. A third officer was calling for assistance from the driveway.
Grant had used the estate’s automated fire system to release a harmless but disorienting gas into the west corridor, then escaped through a service tunnel.
Richard and Vivian had gone with him.
Emma entered Richard’s office.
The transfer documents were gone.
The computer drives had been removed.
A fire burned inside the stone fireplace.
Adrian pulled a partially burned paper from the edge.
It was a custody petition.
The applicant’s name was not Vivian Vale.
It was Thomas Hart.
Emma read the sentence beneath it.
The biological grandfather seeks immediate protective custody of Lily Vale due to financial crimes committed by both parents.
“My father is trying to take my daughter.”
Jonah looked at the document.
“Or Grant wants us to believe he is.”
Adrian’s phone rang.
The hospital security chief was calling.
Adrian answered immediately.
“Is Lily safe?”
“Yes. But someone tried to enter the restricted floor using federal credentials.”
Jonah’s face changed.
“What name?”
The security chief checked.
“Investigator Jonah Reed.”
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Everyone turned toward Jonah.
The real Jonah was standing in the Vale library.
