Chapter 8 - Someone Inside the Estate Was Lying
Paul drew first.
Damian stopped with his hand inside his jacket.
Roman did not move.
“Take it out slowly,” Paul said.
Damian smiled.
“You really think I’d draw against both of you?”
“Then why reach?”
“Phone.”
Paul stepped closer.
“Show me.”
Damian removed his hand.
Empty.
Then slowly reached toward the opposite pocket.
Roman’s eyes never left him.
“You knew about the ledger.”
Damian shook his head.
“No.”
“She never said ledger.”
“She said she knew where Hannah hid something.”
“No,” Norah said.
“I said, ‘I know where my mother hid the ledger.’”
Damian looked at her.
Norah’s confidence wavered.
Had she?
The moment replayed.
She had said exactly that.
Roman exhaled.
Paul lowered his weapon slightly.
Norah felt heat rise into her face.
“I’m sorry.”
Damian’s expression remained hard.
“You should be.”
Roman looked at him.
“She has reason to be suspicious.”
“She nearly got me shot.”
Paul shrugged.
“I wouldn’t have missed.”
Damian glared.
Roman said, “Enough.”
Norah expected Damian to leave.
Instead, he looked at her.
“I knew Hannah Hayes had something.”
Norah stiffened.
“How?”
Damian glanced toward Roman.
“My father worked for Charles.”
Roman’s expression changed.
“Your father?”
“Security.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed.
“What was his name?”
“Patrick Cross.”
Roman remembered.
A distant memory.
His father’s driver.
Later bodyguard.
“Patrick disappeared after my father died.”
Damian nodded.
“Cancer.”
Norah asked, “What did he know?”
“Not much. He once told me Charles spent years looking for a book a woman stole.”
“The ledger.”
“Probably.”
“Did he know where?”
“No.”
Roman looked toward the estate windows.
“North cottage.”
Norah nodded.
They went together.
Roman.
Norah.
Paul.
Damian.
Four guards followed at a distance.
The cottage stood beyond an old iron gate covered in ivy.
The structure had not been occupied in years.
Inside, dust covered everything.
One table.
Two broken chairs.
A fireplace.
Religious carvings decorated an old mantel.
Norah scanned them.
Angel that cannot pray.
Three angels.
One had hands folded.
Another held a harp.
The third had no hands.
Norah approached it.
“This one.”
Roman pulled the statue forward.
Nothing.
Norah examined the wall.
A loose brick.
She pressed it.
The panel behind the angel shifted.
Inside was a narrow cavity.
Empty.
Norah’s heart fell.
“No.”
Roman reached inside.
His fingers touched something.
A piece of cloth.
He pulled out a faded child’s scarf.
Norah recognized it instantly.
She stopped breathing.
“It was mine.”
Roman looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“My mother gave it to me for my seventh birthday.”
Norah took it.
Yellow flowers.
One torn edge she had damaged catching it on a fence.
Hannah had been here.
No question.
Paul searched the compartment.
“Nothing else.”
Norah looked around.
“Somebody got here first.”
Damian crouched near the floor.
“Not recently.”
“What?”
He pointed at dust patterns.
“This panel has been opened before, but not in the last few days.”
Roman thought.
“Evelyn.”
Norah nodded.
“She found it.”
“And took the ledger.”
“Which means Victor was searching Evelyn’s office because he thought she still had it.”
Paul frowned.
“But it wasn’t in the green room.”
Roman looked toward Norah.
“Then she hid it again.”
A gunshot cracked outside.
Paul shoved Norah down.
Roman drew his weapon.
Guards shouted.
A second shot struck the cottage window.
Glass shattered.
Damian yelled into his radio.
“North ridge!”
Roman pulled Norah behind the stone fireplace.
“Stay down.”
The shots stopped.
Within minutes, guards swept the perimeter.
Nobody found the shooter.
But one thing had become clear.
Somebody had known exactly where they were going.
Back inside the estate, Roman locked the property down again.
Norah sat in the kitchen.
Her hands would not stop trembling.
Ruby climbed onto her lap.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
Ruby touched her face.
“You’re lying.”
Norah laughed weakly.
“Yes.”
Theo entered carrying a blanket.
He placed it over Norah’s shoulders without speaking.
Her eyes filled.
These children had spent weeks terrorizing every adult who entered.
Now they were taking care of her.
Roman appeared in the doorway.
He saw them.
Something inside him shifted.
Norah looked up.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
Roman nodded.
Ruby twisted toward him.
“Daddy, Norah got scared.”
“I know.”
“Make the bad people go away.”
Roman looked at his daughter.
Then at Norah.
“I’m trying.”
Ruby frowned.
“Try better.”
Paul nearly choked behind him.
Roman almost smiled.
“Yes, ma’am.”
That night, after the twins slept, Roman joined Norah on the terrace.
She held Hannah’s scarf.
“Evelyn found the ledger,” Roman said.
“Probably.”
“She hid it somewhere else.”
Norah stared into the garden.
“She knew she was being watched.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe she gave it to someone.”
“Who?”
Norah thought.
“Someone nobody would search.”
Roman’s face changed.
“The twins.”
They ran upstairs.
The dollhouse.
The velvet pouch had held only the key and note.
But perhaps there was more.
Norah lifted the miniature roof.
They searched every room.
Nothing.
Theo woke.
“What are you doing?”
Roman turned.
“Looking for something Mommy left.”
Theo climbed down.
“What?”
“A book.”
Theo frowned.
“Mommy’s secret book?”
Roman and Norah froze.
“What secret book?” Roman asked.
Theo rubbed his eyes.
“The red one.”
Roman crouched.
“Where is it?”
Theo looked toward Ruby.
“She hid it.”
Ruby woke.
“No.”
“Ruby,” Roman said carefully. “We need to know.”
“No!”
Norah sat beside her.
“Why?”
“Mommy said bad people want it.”
“We’re trying to keep it safe.”
Ruby looked at Roman.
Then Norah.
“Promise?”
Roman nodded.
Ruby climbed from bed.
She walked into the playroom.
Past the dollhouse.
Past the bookshelf.
Toward the cracked television.
She crouched.
Reached behind a loose section of wall paneling created when Theo had thrown a toy weeks earlier.
And pulled out a thin red ledger.
Roman stared.
Twenty years of secrets had been hidden behind a child’s television.
Ruby handed it to Norah.
“Mommy said give it to the lady with yellow hair.”
Norah’s eyes filled.
“She meant me?”
Ruby nodded.
Roman opened the cover.
Hannah Hayes’s handwriting filled the first page.
Numbers.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Roman flipped through.
His father.
Judges.
Police officers.
Companies.
Victor Sloane’s father.
Calderon.
Then Roman reached the last pages.
Different handwriting.
Evelyn’s.
She had continued Hannah’s work.
Paul leaned closer.
Roman stopped at one entry.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Roman turned the ledger around.
A recent payment.
Three weeks before Evelyn died.
Made to someone inside Roman’s estate.
Norah read the name.
Her stomach dropped.
Margaret Finch.
The woman who had led Norah to the cottage.
The woman who claimed to have helped Hannah.
The woman currently sleeping one floor below the twins.
Roman shut the ledger.
“Find Mrs. Finch.”
Paul hurried out.
Minutes later he returned.
Alone.
“She’s gone.”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
“When?”
“Security says fifteen minutes ago.”
“Gates?”
“No vehicle left.”
Norah looked toward the dark garden.
The estate had tunnels.
Old service corridors.
Places even Roman rarely used.
Ruby suddenly appeared behind them.
She had followed.
“Mrs. Finch went to see the bird man.”
Roman’s blood turned cold.
“When?”
Ruby shrugged.
“Before dinner.”
Roman crouched.
“What did she say?”
Ruby whispered:
“She told him you found Mommy’s red book.”
May you like
And in that instant, Roman realized the person who had tucked his children into bed for most of their lives might have been watching them for his enemy all along.
---
