Chapter 6 - the person who controlled the darkness
The blackout lasted eleven seconds.
For Mara, it felt much longer.
She held Lily against her and listened to the ballroom transform into confusion. Chairs scraped across the floor. Guests shouted names. Someone knocked over a table of glasses.
Daniel’s voice cut through the noise.
“Stay where you are. Do not open the service doors.”
Emergency lights flickered on along the floor.
The chandeliers remained dark.
Adrian was no longer beside the wedding table.
Neither was Eleanor.
Claire turned in a circle, searching for them.
“Where did they go?”
Felix looked at his tablet.
The screen displayed an unfamiliar command.
REMOTE ADMINISTRATOR ACTIVE.
“They’ve taken control of the door system,” he said.
A heavy lock had sealed the ballroom’s main entrance. The service corridor doors were also closed.
Daniel pulled a chair beneath the nearest camera and examined it.
“The light is still off.”
“Someone is interrupting the entire ballroom network,” Felix said.
“From where?”
“Either the security room or the private archive.”
“The archive was sealed.”
“That’s what Eleanor told us.”
Lily lifted her head from Mara’s shoulder.
“The phone is ringing.”
The device Adrian had planted remained in the pocket of her jacket.
Mara removed it.
Jonathan Hart’s name appeared on the screen.
Her father’s photograph was attached to the contact. It showed him standing on the hotel roof twelve years earlier, smiling into the wind.
Mara answered.
“Who is this?”
Only static responded.
Then a man’s voice whispered, “Do not let Claire sign.”
Mara’s knees weakened.
The voice was older and strained, but she remembered it.
“Dad?”
The call ended.
Daniel took the phone and tried returning it. The number did not exist.
Claire stared at them.
“That was him.”
“We don’t know that,” Daniel said.
“You recognized his voice.”
Daniel did not answer.
A loud mechanical noise came from behind the stage.
One of the service doors opened halfway.
A figure slipped through.
Daniel ran toward it.
The door began closing, but he forced his shoulder into the gap and followed the person into the dark corridor.
Felix called after him.
Mara wanted to follow, yet she refused to leave Lily and Claire in the ballroom.
The main doors suddenly unlocked.
Police officers entered with hotel employees and emergency medical staff. Guests moved aside as an officer approached Mara.
Before she could explain, Adrian walked through the entrance with both hands raised.
“I was attacked,” he said. “Daniel Hart threatened me and caused the blackout.”
Claire stared at him.
“You disappeared.”
“I was looking for help.”
“Through a locked ballroom?”
Adrian looked toward Lily.
“That child has my phone.”
Mara handed the device directly to the nearest officer.
“He planted it on her. The security footage shows him doing it.”
Adrian’s lawyer emerged from the crowd.
“The footage was incomplete and may have been altered.”
Felix raised his tablet.
“The local backup is authenticated.”
The screen was blank.
Felix tapped it several times.
The video file had disappeared.
Adrian smiled.
“Then you have nothing.”
A door slammed behind the stage.
Daniel returned, pulling a hotel technician by the arm.
The technician wore a wedding staff badge, but Felix did not recognize him.
Daniel placed a small wireless control device on the nearest table.
“I found him disabling the cameras.”
The man tried to pull free.
“I was paid to repair the network.”
“By whom?” a police officer asked.
He remained silent.
Daniel searched the man’s jacket and found a master hotel keycard, several thousand dollars in cash and a torn piece of paper.
One handwritten instruction was still readable.
DELETE THE BALLROOM FOOTAGE.
WAIT FOR ELEANOR AT THE EAST STAIRCASE.
Claire looked toward her mother’s empty chair.
Mara felt anger give way to fear.
Eleanor had helped Adrian.
But now someone else was waiting for her.
A hotel guard rushed into the ballroom.
“Mr. Grant, we found Mrs. Hart’s bracelet near the east staircase.”
Felix asked, “Where is she?”
The guard swallowed.
“There was blood on the railing, but no sign of Mrs. Hart.”
Mara covered Lily’s ears before the child could hear more.
Then the planted phone vibrated inside the evidence bag.
A new message appeared on its screen.
May you like
ELEANOR FAILED.
BRING THE CHILD TO ROOM 1208.
