Chapter 7 - The Fire Beneath the Ballroom
Smoke filled the service corridor beneath the ballroom.
Alexander ordered Lucy to remain upstairs.
She ignored him.
By the time they reached the sublevel, hotel staff had activated the sprinkler system. Water ran beneath the archive door.
The brass key opened the first lock.
The second lock had been broken from the inside.
Alexander pushed the door open.
The archive room was narrow and lined with metal shelves. Most were empty.
A small fire burned inside a steel disposal barrel.
The security chief used an extinguisher while Alexander searched the room.
“Who activated the alarm?” he asked.
“No one from hotel operations,” the chief replied.
Lucy moved toward a cabinet at the rear.
The drawers had been pulled out and dumped across the floor. Wet papers clung to the marble tiles.
“Most of this is old renovation material,” she said.
Alexander lifted a scorched binder.
“Then what was Vivian protecting?”
Lucy noticed scrape marks beneath one shelf.
“Help me move this.”
Alexander and a security officer pushed the shelf aside.
A square opening had been cut into the wall. Inside was an empty cavity large enough to hold several document boxes.
Someone had removed them recently.
Lucy touched the dust.
“There should be more.”
Alexander found a single photograph inside the cavity.
It showed Vivian standing in the magnolia courtyard at night. She held a brown folder and a small metal box.
The photograph had been taken from above, possibly from a hotel guest room.
Writing covered the back.
She buried the wrong folder.
Alexander showed it to Lucy.
“Who wrote this?”
“I don’t know.”
The security chief called from near the entrance.
“We found someone.”
A man in a maintenance uniform lay unconscious in the service stairwell. He was breathing, and there were no obvious injuries beyond a cut on his forehead.
A black equipment bag rested beside him.
Inside were duplicate hotel keys, a burner phone and a portable document scanner.
The phone contained one recent message.
BISHOP INCOMPLETE. ORIGINAL PACKAGE MOVED TO 1908.
Alexander looked toward the security chief.
“Suite 1908.”
“No one is registered there.”
“Lock the elevators.”
Lucy turned to Alexander.
“Vivian once lived on the nineteenth floor.”
“She had a private residence there before the penthouses were built.”
“Then she knows the old access passages.”
They took the service stairs.
At the eighteenth-floor landing, Lucy stopped to catch her breath.
Alexander stopped too.
“You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He looked at her.
Lucy continued before he could apologize.
“You think the worst part was being locked inside St. Marrow’s. It wasn’t. The worst part was lying awake every night wondering whether you believed I left because I stopped loving you.”
Alexander’s eyes lowered.
“I did believe it.”
“I know.”
“Not at first.”
“But eventually.”
He did not defend himself.
“That is what she counted on,” Lucy said. “Your mother did not need to prove I betrayed you. She only needed to leave enough empty spaces for grief to fill.”
Alexander looked up.
“I searched for you every day.”
“You also let Natalie stand beside you while the world called me a runaway.”
“I never touched her.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?”
“You stopped saying my name.”
The words struck harder than an accusation.
Alexander stepped closer but kept space between them.
“I stopped because every time I said it, someone told me I was destroying myself over a woman who chose to disappear.”
“And you believed them.”
“I believed I had failed you.”
Lucy’s anger wavered.
Before she could reply, the security chief called from above.
“Sir, suite 1908 is open.”
They continued up the stairs.
The door to suite 1908 had been concealed behind a decorative panel at the end of the corridor.
Inside, dust covered antique furniture. Heavy curtains blocked the windows.
The suite looked abandoned, yet a modern scanner glowed on a desk.
Someone had been there minutes earlier.
Lucy found several photographs pinned to a board.
Images of her entering the hotel.
Images of her working in service corridors.
Images of Mara outside Lucy’s temporary apartment.
Alexander stared at them.
“They knew you were here.”
Lucy moved toward a small television monitor.
Security-camera feeds displayed the lobby, staff entrance and executive elevators.
One feed showed the conference room they had left.
Vivian and Natalie were no longer inside.
Alexander grabbed his radio.
“How did they get out?”
The security chief listened to his earpiece.
“The cameras looped for four minutes. Both women are missing.”
Lucy searched the desk.
Inside the top drawer was a digital audio recorder.
She pressed play.
Vivian’s voice filled the room.
“The pregnancy must disappear from his life before the trust recognizes it.”
Dr. Rowe answered.
“And if the patient refuses to cooperate?”
“Then continue the Lena Ward designation until after delivery.”
A third person spoke.
The voice was electronically distorted.
“You are both treating the child as the problem.”
Vivian responded immediately.
“The child is the key.”
“To what?”
“To waking him.”
The recording ended.
Alexander stared at the device.
“Waking whom?”
A phone began ringing somewhere inside the suite.
They followed the sound to a wardrobe.
A burner phone lay on the floor.
Alexander answered.
Vivian spoke without greeting.
“Leave the hotel now.”
“Where are you?”
“It is too late to protect Lucy if you remain there.”
“You are the person she needs protection from.”
“No, Alexander. I am the reason the man beneath this family has been sleeping for twenty-nine years.”
May you like
The line went silent.
Then every light in the hotel went out.
