Chapter 10 - The Missing Twenty Minutes
Luke forced Caroline into the hidden server chamber while Adrian held Helen near the coal chute.
Police boots moved overhead. Their radios came through the old speaking pipes in bursts of static.
“Call Ruiz,” Luke said.
Caroline’s phone lay on the desk. “What do I tell her?”
“That Helen contacted you after an argument. That you panicked. That no one is in danger.”
“She won’t believe me.”
The knife touched the underside of Caroline’s belly.
“Make her.”
Caroline called. Ruiz answered at once.
“I was wrong,” Caroline said. “Helen is safe. We are not in the house.”
“Where are you?”
“Driving north.”
Ruiz allowed a pause. “Do blue roses need winter?”
Luke leaned close enough to hear.
Caroline saw suspicion enter his eyes.
“No,” she said. “They need sunlight.”
Ruiz understood. “Call me when you arrive.”
The officers did not leave immediately. They searched the visible rooms, but Luke had hidden the linen entrance behind shelving. After thirty minutes the radios faded.
Luke took the phone and struck Caroline across the mouth.
“What are blue roses?”
“A childhood game.”
He looked at Adrian. “Search the system.”
Daniel had concealed the emergency channel well, but Adrian knew where to look. Within an hour he found fragments of code, then traced them to the pantry panel.
Luke tore the recording unit from the wall. “How long?”
“At least three weeks,” Adrian said. “There are uploads, but I can’t see the destination.”
Luke turned toward Caroline.
The rage she expected did not come. Instead, he looked wounded.
“You recorded me in my own home.”
“You planned my death in mine.”
“I planned to save what your mother stole.”
“What did she steal?”
Luke glanced at Helen.
Helen’s expression had changed. Beneath the fear was recognition.
“The Cinder Ledger,” she said. “Eleanor told me it was destroyed.”
“She lied,” Luke replied. “It is in this house.”
“You married Caroline for a ledger?”
“I married her because it was the only way inside.”
The sentence hung in the cold room.
Caroline had already read the contract, but hearing him say it stripped away the last thin hope that some part of their beginning had been real.
“And the baby?” she asked.
Luke looked at her belly. “The baby made the house mine.”
Helen lunged at him.
Adrian caught her, but the movement gave Caroline time to seize the desk lamp. She struck Luke’s wrist. The knife fell. Caroline ran into the passage as shouting erupted behind her.
She could not outrun them. At the first junction she turned toward the coal chute, then doubled back through a narrow stair marked on her mother’s map. It rose behind the library fireplace.
Caroline emerged into the dark library and locked the panel. Her phone was still below. The visible security system had been disabled. Police had left units at the road, but the mansion’s stone walls swallowed sound.
She reached the kitchen and found the pantry torn apart. Wires hung from the open panel. The black recording unit lay crushed beneath Luke’s shoe.
Its internal light was dark.
Caroline opened the flour bin and dug beneath the bag. Daniel had installed a second transmitter inside the base, powered independently. A pin of blue light still shone.
The backup had been listening throughout dinner.
She needed only repeat the phrase.
Footsteps entered the foyer.
Luke’s voice moved through the house. “Caroline, Helen is hurt. If you run, she dies.”
Caroline crouched behind the island and whispered, “Blue roses need winter.”
Nothing happened.
The light stayed blue.
She tried again. Still blue.
Adrian had damaged the microphone but not the transmitter. The emergency call could still send if the system heard the phrase through another linked device.
The nearest surviving microphone was built into the kitchen’s voice-controlled oven, ten feet away.
Luke stepped into the kitchen.
He saw her immediately.
Behind him, Adrian dragged Helen toward the front hall.
Luke smiled. “There you are.”
May you like
He locked the kitchen doors and placed a steaming pot on the stove.
“We are going to try this one last time,” he said. “And this time, you will sign.”
