Chapter 9 - The Room Beneath the Roses
The smell grew stronger.
Sarah pulled her blouse over her nose and searched the walls for a switch. Victor climbed the stairs and struck the hatch with his shoulder, but it did not move.
One security officer tried his radio.
Static answered.
“Elena,” Sarah said, “look for another exit.”
The underground room was approximately twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. Metal shelves lined two walls. The ventilation duct was too narrow for a person.
Elena forced herself to think through the fear.
Thomas would never build a room with only one exit. After Margaret’s death, he had become obsessed with fire safety. He kept ladders beneath every second-floor window and extinguishers in every hallway.
There had to be another way out.
The recorded message continued.
“You always believed Thomas was a hero. He wasn’t. He chose his secrets over your mother, and now you have chosen them over your child.”
Elena ran her hands along the concrete wall.
Her daughter moved violently inside her, responding to Elena’s racing heart.
“Don’t listen,” Sarah said.
“What is the chemical?” Elena asked.
Victor sniffed the air.
“Possibly a sedative vapor. Evelyn used compounds that caused dizziness and memory loss.”
“You say that as if it was normal.”
“At Blackridge, nothing was normal.”
One security officer found a seam behind the filing cabinets. Together they pulled the cabinet forward, revealing a narrow metal door.
No handle.
Only a circular indentation.
Elena examined the room.
The photograph on the wall was mounted inside a round silver frame.
She removed it.
The frame fit into the indentation.
The door released.
Cool air rushed through.
They entered a tunnel barely wide enough to walk single file. The passage sloped upward and ended behind a wooden panel.
Victor pushed it open.
They emerged inside Thomas’s study.
The hidden panel behind the atlas stood open.
Thomas had connected the greenhouse chamber to the house.
Sarah called emergency services while the officers opened windows. Elena sank into her father’s chair, dizzy but conscious.
Her phone displayed fourteen missed calls.
Thirteen were from Julian.
The final call was from an unknown number.
A voicemail waited.
Elena pressed play.
Evelyn spoke.
“You have ten minutes to return the Blackridge archive. Come alone to the north gate. If Sarah or the police follow, Julian will die.”
Elena looked up.
“Where is Julian?”
Sarah checked her phone.
“He was supposed to be at a hotel under the protective order.”
Victor’s face tightened.
“Evelyn took him.”
“Why would she threaten her own son?”
“Because she no longer needs him.”
Elena called Julian.
No answer.
She tried again.
On the third call, someone picked up.
Elena heard breathing.
“Julian?”
A weak groan came through the speaker.
Then Evelyn spoke.
“Bring the brass key.”
“I already opened the room.”
“The key opens more than the room.”
“What did you do to Julian?”
“What you forced me to do.”
“You did this.”
“You turned him against me.”
“He learned the truth.”
“He learned Thomas’s version.”
Elena looked at Victor.
“Where are you?”
“The place Margaret should have died the first time.”
The call ended.
Elena knew the road.
Her mother’s accident had happened at Ashford Bend, three miles from the house.
Sarah called the police and relayed the location.
“You’re staying here,” she told Elena.
“Evelyn asked for me.”
“And intends to kill you.”
“If police arrive before she sees the key, she may hurt Julian.”
“He threatened you.”
“I know.”
“Then why risk yourself?”
“Because saving him and forgiving him are not the same thing.”
Victor stood.
“I’ll go.”
“She wants me.”
“She wants the key. You’re carrying her grandchild.”
Elena looked down at the brass key.
“Why does she need this if the chamber is open?”
Victor’s gaze moved toward the photograph from the safe room.
“Thomas said the archive was beneath the house. Maybe what we found was only part of it.”
Sarah opened the waterproof boxes recovered from the chamber. Several contained copies, not originals. Others were filled with blank paper.
The safe remained locked.
“The six-digit code,” Elena said. “Evelyn may know it.”
“Or the key opens another compartment,” Sarah replied.
A car engine roared outside.
One of the security officers ran to the window.
Victor’s sedan, which police had left near the gate as evidence, accelerated down the driveway.
The driver’s face was hidden by a hood.
Elena checked the brass key.
It was gone.
On the desk lay a handwritten message.
May you like
You believed I came to save you.
Victor.
