Chapter 11 - The Day of the Brick
By the time Wyatt broke through the guests, Everett had raised the brick.
Sadie saw Wyatt running toward her, his white shirt bright against the dark hedge. She tried to warn him that her legs were failing. Only a whisper came out.
Everett swung.
Wyatt seized Sadie and pulled her away. The brick missed her skull by inches and shattered against the paving stone. The memory card flew from the metal drawer and vanished beneath the roses.
Everett raised the remaining half. Wyatt shielded Sadie with his body.
Celeste stood beside the fountain.
She laughed.
The cold sound silenced even Everett. Sadie collapsed into Wyatt's arms while guests watched from the terrace, some filming, others retreating behind one another.
"Mother," Sadie whispered.
Celeste came closer. "Look what you forced him to do."
Daniel emerged from the service path. He had gone to disconnect the garden projector before Everett could destroy the master copy. Now he dropped his tool case and called the police.
"I saw everything."
Everett threw the brick into the fountain and rushed toward him. Daniel backed through the hedge, keeping his phone raised. Wyatt lowered Sadie to the path and called for an ambulance.
Celeste crouched beside her daughter. Her cream sleeve brushed the dirt.
"Where is the key?"
Sadie locked her fingers around it.
"You will never find it."
Celeste's fear showed then, quick and naked. She reached for Sadie's fist. Wyatt caught her wrist.
The police arrived before she could recover her expression.
What Sadie had not seen in the first bright tunnel of the attack was Rosa slipping behind the roses. While officers restrained Everett and paramedics worked on Sadie, the housekeeper found the memory card among the thorns and hid it inside her shoe.
At the hospital, blood tests identified midazolam, a sedative Sadie had not been prescribed. A puncture mark at her hairline supported her account. The untouched iced tea from the party also contained the drug, suggesting Celeste had prepared two ways to silence her.
Everett was booked for aggravated assault, attempted destruction of evidence, and witness intimidation. His attorneys obtained a special hearing before dawn. Celeste was questioned and released while investigators waited for the arson videos to be authenticated.
Wyatt remained beside Sadie's bed. When she woke, his hand was around hers and Detective Mercer stood near the window.
"Your mother asked for the key," Mercer said. "What does it open?"
Sadie saw Rosa in the hall. The housekeeper touched one finger to her shoe, then shook her head almost imperceptibly.
"I do not know," Sadie told the detective.
It was the first deliberate lie she had ever told law enforcement. It tasted too much like her family.
After Mercer left, Rosa entered and placed the memory card beneath Sadie's pillow.
"Miss Eleanor said it was the last copy," she whispered. "She told me not to trust anyone until you watched it."
Wyatt locked the hospital door. Sadie inserted the card into Leah's laptop.
The first file was a complete copy of the garage video. The second showed Mara alive in the abandoned boathouse three days after the river search began. Her face was bruised, but she looked directly at the camera and spoke.
"My name is Mara Halston. Everett forged pension documents in my name. Celeste arranged the car crash to make me disappear. Harold Vance moved the money, but he does not control it. A person we call V.H. controls all of us."
Mara held up a page containing account numbers.
"If I do not return, search for the Valerian account. Do not trust any transfer signed by two people. There are always three."
The video jumped. Mara was now outside, wearing a dark coat. Thomas Cole stood beside her, younger but unmistakable.
"Thomas is helping me leave," she continued. "Celeste says she will protect the child if I remain silent. I do not believe her, but I have no choice."
The camera shifted. At the edge of the frame stood a little girl in a blue coat.
Sadie leaned toward the screen. The child was perhaps five, with pale hair and a notch in her left eyebrow.
"The baby from the photograph," she said.
"Mara's daughter," Wyatt replied.
On the recording, Mara knelt before the child. "If we are separated, remember the three notes."
She hummed the same melody hidden in Rosemont's piano.
The file ended with Thomas guiding them into a car. Its plate belonged to a Halston hotel in Vermont.
Leah searched the company archives. The vehicle had been reported stolen the following day and recovered months later near the Canadian border.
"She could have escaped," Sadie said.
"Or someone caught her," Wyatt answered.
A final text file contained a schedule of automatic network backups. The carriage clocks had not only recorded the east wing. For twelve years they had sent encrypted copies to a server hidden somewhere beneath Rosemont.
Daniel called from the police station. Investigators had found the server's power signature.
"It is under the south garden," he said. "Behind the wall your father tried to close."
Sadie looked at the brass key.
"Do not let them open it without us."
On the other end, Daniel went silent.
May you like
"We are already too late," he said. "Your mother is inside the tunnel."
