Chapter 3 - Eleven Missing Minutes
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then Gabriel slowly looked at me.
“Whose badge?”
He turned the tablet.
The identification number belonged to him.
Lily was too young to understand what that meant.
Claire wasn't.
She pulled her daughter closer.
Gabriel's expression became stone.
“I didn't open that door.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because if you were working for Victor, I would've been dead years ago.”
Claire looked between us.
“That is a very strange way to trust someone.”
“In my world, it's reliable.”
Gabriel took the tablet.
“Then somebody cloned my credential.”
“You just said that was nearly impossible.”
“I said it shouldn't work. Not that it couldn't.”
“Who has access to the encryption system?”
“Three people.”
“Names.”
“Me. You. Elias Mercer.”
Claire frowned.
“Who is Elias Mercer?”
“My attorney.”
That description barely covered it.
Elias had served as legal counsel to the Moretti family since my father was alive. He had been at my mother’s funeral. He knew which contracts mattered, which enemies were real, which rumors were useful, and where almost every legal skeleton in our company history had been buried.
Gabriel watched me carefully.
“You thinking what I'm thinking?”
“No.”
“You don't even know what I'm thinking.”
“I know exactly what you're thinking. And no.”
Claire looked at me.
“You trust him?”
“I have for seventeen years.”
“So you trusted the guard who was drugged.”
“Russo was here eleven months.”
“And whoever entered my apartment had a badge you thought couldn't be copied.”
She had a point.
I disliked how often that was happening.
“Gabriel, verify Elias's location.”
“I already sent someone.”
“Quietly.”
“Of course.”
I looked at Claire.
“Pack for Lily.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere Victor doesn't know.”
“You think there is somewhere he doesn't know?”
“There had better be.”
While Claire packed, I went with Gabriel to the security office.
The Moretti estate control room occupied a windowless space beneath the east wing. Twenty monitors showed every hallway, gate, roofline, perimeter road, and interior access point.
Technicians were reconstructing corrupted data.
Eleven missing minutes.
That was all Victor needed.
At 11:38, the east service corridor camera froze.
At 11:39, Claire's hallway feed repeated the same nine-second segment.
At 11:40, Russo stopped responding.
At 11:43, someone entered the staff wing.
At 11:49, the cameras returned.
Whoever had done it understood the system.
Not merely the hardware.
Our procedures.
“What about the tea?” I asked.
Gabriel pointed to another monitor.
“Kitchen camera.”
We watched a housekeeper named Rosa prepare a tray at 10:21.
Tea.
Honey.
A small plate of crackers.
“Claire didn't order it.”
“Rosa says she received a message from internal hospitality.”
“From?”
“An automated terminal.”
“Which terminal?”
“Executive office.”
My office.
I looked at Gabriel.
“Someone is enjoying this.”
“Victor usually does.”
The camera showed Rosa leaving the tray near Claire’s apartment.
Nothing suspicious.
“Could Rosa have added the sedative?”
“Michael says the dosage was probably dissolved in liquid.”
“Question her.”
“Already did. She's terrified.”
“People can be terrified and guilty.”
“I know.”
A technician raised his hand.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“What?”
“We found another fragment.”
The monitor changed.
A side corridor appeared.
Time stamp: 11:46.
A shadow crossed the far wall.
Then a man entered the frame.
Only for two seconds.
He wore dark clothes.
His face was concealed.
But he carried something.
A silver hard-shell case.
Claire entered behind us.
She had changed into jeans and a sweater. Lily slept against her shoulder.
She looked at the screen.
“What is that?”
Gabriel enlarged the image.
“Medical case?”
“No.”
Claire stepped closer.
“I've seen it.”
I turned.
“Where?”
“Daniel had one.”
The room went quiet.
“Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before he died.”
“What was inside?”
“He never let me open it.”
Gabriel froze the image.
“Same case?”
“I can't be certain.”
“What happened to Daniel's?”
“It disappeared after the accident.”
I felt the shape of the problem changing.
Until that moment, I had assumed Victor was looking for Daniel's evidence.
Now I wondered if he already had part of it.
“Could the intruder have brought Daniel's case here intentionally?”
Claire looked pale.
“Why?”
“To scare you.”
“Victor doesn't need props to scare me.”
“No. But maybe the case contains something.”
“Like what?”
“That's what we're going to find out.”
The man disappeared from camera view.
Gabriel traced possible routes.
Only one led out of the estate without crossing a working camera.
The old wine tunnel.
My grandfather had built it during renovations in the seventies, connecting the basement to a storage building beyond the gardens.
It had been sealed for twenty years.
Or so I believed.
Gabriel swore.
“I'll check it.”
“I’m coming.”
Claire caught my arm.
“Adrian.”
I looked down at her hand.
She released me immediately.
“What?”
“If Victor wants the key, why didn't he take the rabbit when he was in my apartment?”
Good question.
“He may not have known where Daniel hid it.”
“He called five minutes after we opened the seam.”
Another good question.
That realization hit both of us simultaneously.
Someone had watched us open it.
I scanned the room.
“Phones.”
Gabriel understood.
Everyone placed their phones on the desk.
Technicians swept the devices.
Nothing.
“Room?”
We searched.
Two minutes later, Gabriel found a listening device beneath the edge of the television console in Claire's bedroom.
Small.
Professional.
Recently installed.
Victor had heard everything.
The locker.
The key.
Our conversation about Daniel.
Which meant the countdown had started.
“We leave now,” I said.
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
“Not negotiable.”
“The key.”
“What about it?”
“If Victor heard us, he'll be searching for whatever it opens.”
“Yes.”
“Then running doesn't solve anything.”
“It keeps Lily alive while I solve it.”
“I already ran for three years.”
Her voice remained low because Lily was sleeping.
“I changed apartments. Changed jobs. Stopped speaking to friends. I moved twice in one year. Every strange car made me wonder if he'd found us. Every unknown number made my hands shake.”
She glanced at her daughter.
“Lily learned to recognize Victor Kane's name before she learned to read.”
Something twisted in my chest.
“I don't want that anymore.”
“What do you want?”
“To end it.”
“So do I.”
“Then don't hide me somewhere while the men make decisions.”
“Claire—”
“Daniel died because he thought protecting me meant telling me nothing.”
That stopped me.
“I won't make that mistake again.”
“You understand that staying involved makes you a target.”
“I became a target the day I married Daniel.”
She held out her hand.
“Give me the key.”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because Victor expects you to have it.”
“He also expects you to.”
“Exactly.”
“So?”
I slipped the key into the inner pocket of my jacket.
“Then he can come looking.”
Claire stared at me for a long moment.
“You really are as difficult as people say.”
“People say worse.”
“I've heard.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
We entered the sealed basement corridor with four security officers.
The wine tunnel door stood behind an old wooden shelving unit.
Its lock had been cut.
Freshly.
Beyond it stretched a narrow stone passage.
Cold air moved toward us.
At the far end, the exterior storage door hung open.
Victor's man had escaped.
On the floor lay a silver hard-shell case.
Claire stopped.
“That's Daniel's.”
We approached carefully.
Gabriel checked it.
No wires.
No obvious mechanism.
“Open it?”
I nodded.
The case contained one thing.
A photograph.
Daniel Bennett stood beside Victor Kane at a charity gala.
Between them was a third man.
Me.
Except I had never attended that gala.
I had never met Daniel.
And the photograph was convincing enough that for one terrible moment even I questioned my own memory.
Claire picked it up.
Her hands shook.
“Daniel showed me this picture once.”
“With me in it?”
“No.”
“Who was standing there?”
She swallowed.
“Someone else.”
“Who?”
Before she answered, Gabriel’s radio crackled.
A guard’s voice came through.
“We found something on the second floor.”
“What?”
“Writing.”
“Where?”
“Mrs. Bennett's bathroom mirror.”
“Say it.”
The guard hesitated.
“RETURN DANIEL'S KEY.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Victor had been inside long enough to drug her, manipulate the cameras, plant Daniel’s case, install a listening device, and leave a message.
He wanted us frightened.
But the photograph concerned me more.
Someone had replaced another man's face with mine.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
“Who was originally standing beside Daniel?”
She looked at me.
“Elias Mercer.”
May you like
And somewhere above us, a door slammed.
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