THE BRICK FELL BEFORE THE TRUTH COULD BE BURIED

Wyatt called his father's neighbor while Leah contacted the local police. Twelve minutes later, the neighbor entered Thomas Cole's small house and found it empty. The back door stood open. A kettle had boiled dry on the stove. Thomas's truck remained in the drive, but the metal lockbox where he kept his Rosemont papers had been taken.

Wyatt packed a bag.

"You cannot leave the estate," he told Sadie. "I can."

"Whoever took your father expects you to go alone."

"Then they will be disappointed when police come with me."

"The local chief sat on Halston boards. Eleanor did not trust him."

"That was twelve years ago."

"His deputy is chief now."

Leah ended her call. "State police are sending someone, but it will take an hour. We should not announce what we know to anyone else."

Daniel stood at the bedroom window, watching a black sedan circle the drive. "Too late. Mr. Halston's security team has doubled since morning."

Rosa entered with clean towels no one had requested. Beneath them she carried a yellowed envelope. "Mr. Cole gave me this after Miss Mara disappeared. He told me to hide it unless Sadie ever began asking questions."

Wyatt recognized his father's handwriting. He opened the envelope and found three duplicate gate logs, a gas station receipt, and a hand-drawn map of the south road.

The receipt placed Wyatt twenty miles away at 10:39 p.m. The time beside his signature had been altered.

"Why did my father give these to you?" Wyatt asked.

"Because he did not trust himself to keep them," Rosa said. "Mr. Everett came to his house twice. The second time, your father returned with blood on his shirt."

"Whose blood?"

"He would not say."

Sadie studied the map. A circle marked an abandoned boathouse upstream from the place where Mara's car entered the river. Beside it Thomas had written: She was moved before the car went in.

Wyatt sat heavily on the edge of the bed. For years he had believed his father's drinking began with guilt over a neglected gate. The possibility that Thomas had helped cover a kidnapping was almost worse than believing he had been framed.

Sadie knelt in front of him. Hurt still stood between them, but so did the terror of losing a parent to the same secret.

"We will find him," she said.

"You should not have to trust me."

"I do not trust what you hid. I trust what you are doing now. Those are different things."

He looked at her. "Is that enough?"

"For today."

Daniel cleared his throat and turned from the window. "The garden circuit just came on."

No one had touched the panel.

They followed him to the basement. A soft green light pulsed beside the line running south. Daniel connected a handheld tester.

"Data is moving both directions," he said. "Something in the garden is sending a live signal, and something in the house is answering."

"Can we see it?" Leah asked.

"If I cut the line and bridge it through a recorder, maybe. But whoever controls the other end will know."

Sadie remembered the message inside the locket. The garden listens.

"Do it."

Daniel stripped the cable. The green light flickered. His laptop filled with strings of numbers, then resolved into a simple audio interface. A waveform trembled across the screen.

At first came wind, birds, and the splash of the fountain. Then Everett's voice, speaking outdoors.

"The Cole man has become a problem."

Celeste answered. "You were told not to touch him."

"He kept the logs."

"Then Vance will retrieve them."

Sadie looked at Leah. "Harold Vance?"

Leah held up a hand for silence.

Everett spoke again. "And Sadie?"

"She will sign by Friday," Celeste said. "If she does not, the blue room will burn with her inside it."

The waveform went flat.

Above them, every lock in Rosemont clicked at once.

The basement door slammed shut.