Chapter 2 - The Locked House
Daniel wrapped damp cloth around the children’s mouths and led them into the corridor.
The red emergency lights made every portrait on the walls appear bloodstained.
“Stay close to me,” he said.
Oliver held Lucy’s hand.
“The back stairs may be open.”
“They won’t be,” Lucy whispered.
Daniel looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“She locks everything when people come.”
“Which people?”
Lucy’s eyes moved toward the camera above the door.
“She listens.”
Daniel removed his shoe and struck the camera until the lens shattered.
The alarm continued wailing.
He pulled out his phone.
No signal.
Vanessa had activated a jammer.
The officers outside would know something was wrong, but the front entrance was reinforced steel beneath its decorative wood. Blackwood Manor had once belonged to an industrialist obsessed with kidnapping. Its security system had been built to resist siege.
Daniel had studied the original plans before coming.
He had not known Vanessa had modernized them.
A burst of static sounded over the intercom.
“Daniel,” Vanessa said, “you always did enjoy playing the hero.”
He looked up at the speaker.
“You always did enjoy hiding behind walls.”
Her laugh was soft.
“I am not hiding.”
A camera pivoted toward them from the far end of the corridor.
Daniel placed himself between the lens and the children.
“Let them leave.”
“They are perfectly safe.”
Lucy began trembling.
Daniel felt it through her hand.
“You drugged them through the ventilation system.”
“A mild sedative. Recommended by a physician.”
“Which physician?”
Silence.
Daniel moved toward the servants’ staircase.
A steel barrier had descended behind the tapestry.
Oliver touched the wall beside it.
“There’s another passage.”
“Where?”
“In Dad’s study.”
“That is on the east side.”
“We can use the attic.”
Lucy shook her head.
“She has dogs upstairs.”
Daniel heard a distant bark.
Vanessa’s voice returned.
“You see, Oliver? This is what happens when you disobey me. People get hurt.”
The boy’s shoulders tightened.
Daniel crouched in front of him.
“Listen to me. Nothing happening tonight is your fault.”
Oliver’s eyes glistened.
“She said Dad died because I told him about Lucy.”
Daniel’s stomach turned.
“What exactly did you tell him?”
“That she was keeping Lucy in the west wing. Dad came home angry. They fought in his office. The next morning, he left in his car.”
Daniel remembered the official account. Edward had driven through a guardrail during heavy rain. His blood alcohol level had been high. The police found an open whiskey bottle beside him.
Edward had not consumed alcohol for six years.
Daniel had told the police.
Vanessa claimed grief had caused a relapse.
The investigation ended within days.
“Your father did not die because of you,” Daniel said.
“But she said he went out because I lied.”
“You did not lie.”
The camera at the end of the hall rotated closer.
Daniel stood and lifted a side table. He hurled it through the lens.
Sparks fell.
Vanessa stopped speaking.
For several seconds, the alarm and the hissing vents were the only sounds.
Then the dogs barked again.
Closer.
“We need to move,” Daniel said.
Oliver guided them through a linen closet, where a narrow ladder disappeared into darkness.
Daniel climbed first.
The attic smelled of dust and old cedar.
He helped Lucy through the opening, then Oliver.
Below them, a door slammed.
Dog claws scraped across the corridor floor.
Daniel closed the hatch.
The children knew the route better than he did. Oliver led them between covered furniture, old trunks, and sheet-draped statues. Lucy moved slowly, struggling to breathe.
Daniel lifted her into his arms.
She weighed almost nothing.
Halfway across the attic, Oliver stopped.
“What is it?”
The boy pointed toward a thin beam of light beneath an old wardrobe.
“There was never light there before.”
Daniel set Lucy down and moved the wardrobe aside.
A metal door stood behind it.
New wiring ran through the frame.
“Is that the way to the study?” he asked.
Oliver shook his head.
“I didn’t know it was here.”
Daniel examined the keypad.
A four-digit code was required.
Vanessa’s voice emerged from a speaker mounted above them.
“You cannot open every door, Daniel.”
He looked around for the camera but saw none.
“You seem worried that I might.”
“I am trying to protect you from disappointment.”
“Like you protected Edward?”
A pause.
The alarm suddenly stopped.
The silence felt more dangerous.
“You were always jealous of him,” Vanessa said. “Even when you were children.”
Daniel remembered Edward at twelve, defending him from their father. Edward at twenty-one, secretly paying Daniel’s law school tuition. Edward at thirty, standing between Daniel and a family scandal that would eventually drive them apart.
“Edward was the best of us.”
“No,” Vanessa replied. “Edward was weak. He believed love could cure dishonesty.”
Daniel’s hand tightened.
“What did he discover?”
“You will have to ask him.”
The speaker clicked off.
Daniel stared upward.
Oliver whispered, “She says that sometimes.”
“What?”
“That Dad is still here.”
Lucy covered her ears.
“She makes us hear his voice.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Daniel turned.
A man stood near the attic hatch.
He wore the black uniform of Vanessa’s private security team. A scar ran from his left temple to his jaw. In his hands was a compact stun weapon.
Daniel recognized him from the court file.
Marcus Trent.
Former military police.
Dismissed after evidence disappeared from an assault investigation.
Vanessa’s chief of security.
“Step away from the children,” Marcus said.
Daniel moved in front of Oliver and Lucy.
“The police are outside.”
“The police cannot enter.”
“They will.”
Marcus raised the weapon.
“Mrs. Blackwood wants you removed from the property.”
“Mrs. Blackwood is about to be arrested.”
“That is not my concern.”
“No,” Daniel said. “Your concern is what happens when they discover you imprisoned a child.”
Something flickered in Marcus’s eyes.
He had not known about Lucy.
Daniel saw it immediately.
“There is no imprisoned child,” Marcus said.
Lucy stepped slightly from behind Daniel.
Marcus stared at her bruised wrist.
His weapon lowered by half an inch.
“Where did she come from?”
“Ask your employer.”
Footsteps sounded beneath the attic hatch.
More guards were coming.
Daniel glanced toward the metal door.
“You have two choices, Marcus. You can help Vanessa bury this, or you can make sure those children get out alive.”
Marcus looked at Oliver’s cheek.
His expression hardened.
“She told us the boy attacked her.”
Oliver stared at the floor.
Daniel said, “Does that look believable to you?”
The footsteps reached the hatch.
Marcus made his decision.
He turned and fired the stun weapon at the first guard climbing through.
The man convulsed and fell backward.
Marcus slammed the hatch and dragged a trunk over it.
“You have about two minutes,” he said.
“Open the exterior gates.”
“I cannot. She changed my access codes.”
Daniel pointed toward the hidden metal door.
“What is behind that?”
Marcus glanced at it.
“Her private surveillance room.”
“You know the code?”
“No.”
Oliver approached the keypad.
He examined the worn numbers.
Two, six, eight, and nine showed faint scratches.
He looked at Lucy’s wooden horse.
Then at Daniel.
“My father’s birthday was June twenty-eighth.”
Daniel entered 0628.
A red light flashed.
Incorrect.
“One attempt remaining before lockout,” Marcus warned.
Lucy stared at the keypad.
“Not his birthday.”
“What, then?”
“The day he promised to come back.”
“When was that?”
She hugged the horse.
“He said, ‘Nine days after Oliver turns ten, I will take you both away.’”
Oliver’s face went pale.
“My birthday is today.”
Daniel looked at the keypad.
Nine days later would be August nineteenth.
He entered 0819.
The lock clicked.
The metal door opened.
Inside, dozens of screens glowed in the dark.
Every room in Blackwood Manor appeared on the monitors.
The kitchen.
The bedrooms.
The staircases.
The children’s rooms.
Even the bathrooms.
Marcus swore under his breath.
Daniel stepped inside.
One monitor showed Vanessa in the library, opening a safe behind a painting.
Another displayed the police outside the gates.
A third showed two guards approaching the attic through the east corridor.
But the central screen was different.
It displayed a live feed from a room beneath the manor.
A man sat in a wheelchair with his back to the camera.
His head was bowed.
Medical equipment surrounded him.
On a nearby table rested a framed photograph of Oliver and Lucy.
Oliver stepped toward the screen.
His face lost all color.
The man in the wheelchair slowly lifted his head.
Even through the grainy image, Daniel recognized his younger brother.
May you like
Oliver reached out and touched the monitor.
“Dad?”
