Chapter 2 - Seven Years Missing)
Ethan Mercer arrived home expecting an argument about flowers.
Victoria had texted him four times during his meeting.
Wedding planner disaster.
Call me.
We need to discuss seating.
Your mother is impossible.
That was normal.
The silence inside Mercer House was not.
He stepped from the garage hallway into the main foyer and heard a child screaming.
Then Elena's voice.
Then the bat hitting marble.
Everything afterward happened too quickly.
The suitcase.
Victoria.
The girl.
The word Dad.
His father's handwriting.
Now, twenty minutes later, Ethan stood in the library while Victoria paced near the fireplace and Elena sat with Lily on the leather sofa.
Nobody trusted anybody enough to leave the others alone.
The bat had been locked in Ethan's study.
The front doors were closed.
Ethan's security manager was on his way.
Or at least Ethan believed he was.
Three calls had gone unanswered.
Ethan held the envelope.
"Start talking."
Elena looked at Lily.
"Not in front of her."
"I've apparently lost seven years of my life, Elena. Forgive me if I'm done waiting."
Lily looked at him.
Ethan immediately regretted his tone.
He lowered his voice.
"Would you like something to eat?"
Lily shook her head.
"Hot chocolate?"
Another shake.
Victoria laughed bitterly.
"Wonderful. Father of the year already."
Ethan turned.
"One more comment about her and you're leaving."
"This is my home."
"No. It's mine."
The words struck Victoria harder than the slap had.
Elena noticed.
Ethan did too.
Victoria folded her arms.
"Open the envelope."
Elena stood.
"No."
"It's addressed to me."
"It was sent to me."
"By my father."
"After he died."
Ethan looked at her.
"What?"
Elena reached into her coat and removed the lawyer's letter.
He read it twice.
Samuel Crowe.
Ethan recognized the name.
Crowe had represented his father during a corporate investigation nearly a decade earlier.
Then the lawyer vanished from private practice.
Ethan hadn't heard his name in years.
"Where is Crowe?"
"I don't know."
"You drove four hundred miles because a retired lawyer sent you a key?"
"And because he knew Lily's name."
Ethan stared at his daughter.
He still couldn't think of her that way.
Not completely.
Yet every time he looked at Lily, another memory surfaced.
Elena laughing in the kitchen.
Elena telling him she might be late.
Elena crying during their final week together.
Elena asking strange questions.
If something happened to me, would you look for me?
He had laughed.
Nothing's going to happen to you.
The next morning, she vanished.
He had looked.
For months.
Victoria had been the one who eventually convinced him to stop.
She's gone because she wants to be gone.
Ethan looked at Victoria.
"You told me Elena moved to Mexico."
Victoria froze.
Elena stared at him.
"What?"
Victoria's jaw tightened.
"That's what I was told."
"By who?"
"Your father."
Elena stood so quickly Lily jumped.
"Your father told me Ethan never wanted to see me again."
Ethan looked at her.
"He told you?"
"He sent someone."
"Who?"
"A man named Daniel."
Ethan's stomach tightened.
Daniel Pike had been his father's personal security chief.
He died in a car accident six months after Elena disappeared.
Ethan turned toward Victoria.
"You knew Daniel."
"So did half the house."
"You were dating his brother."
"Years earlier."
Elena looked between them.
"What aren't you telling me?"
Ethan crossed to a cabinet and poured water.
His hands were shaking.
"Daniel wasn't just security. My father used him for problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"The kind wealthy people don't discuss."
Victoria rolled her eyes.
"Your father was dramatic."
"My father was terrified before he died."
That silenced the room.
Elena stepped closer.
"Terrified of what?"
Ethan stared at the fire.
"For three months before the heart attack, he kept changing passwords. Moving money. Replacing staff. He installed cameras in rooms that never had them."
Victoria stiffened.
"He was sick."
"He told me someone inside the family was stealing from Mercer Holdings."
Elena glanced at the envelope.
"And Lily?"
"I don't know."
A small voice interrupted them.
"Mom."
Lily stood near the library door.
Something rested in her palm.
A tiny brass disk.
Elena frowned.
"Where did you get that?"
"Under the couch."
Ethan took it.
It looked like a battery.
Then he saw the lens.
A camera.
Old.
Dusty.
But the indicator light was blinking.
Ethan's face hardened.
"This system was disconnected years ago."
Victoria's eyes shifted toward the door.
Ethan noticed.
"You knew this was here."
"No."
"Victoria."
"I said no."
The camera blinked again.
Ethan turned it over.
A thin wire disappeared beneath the floor trim.
Someone had recently repaired the old surveillance network.
Someone had been watching the library.
Possibly the foyer.
Possibly Elena arriving.
Ethan walked toward the security panel hidden behind a painting.
The display was dark.
He entered his code.
Access denied.
He tried the master code.
Access denied.
Victoria whispered something beneath her breath.
Ethan turned.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing."
Elena heard it.
"You said room seventeen."
Victoria's face became expressionless.
Ethan went still.
There was no room seventeen on the architectural plans.
But there had been one place in Mercer House that his father always called that.
The sealed basement archive.
The room Ethan had been forbidden to enter as a child.
After his father's death, Ethan found it empty.
Or so he thought.
Elena removed the brass key from her pocket.
May you like
Stamped into its side was a tiny number.
17.
