Chapter 2 - THE ROOM WITHOUT WINDOWSThe emergency lights came on three seconds later.
Red strips along the floor cast the library in a dim glow. Shadows stretched across Julian’s face, making him appear less like the man I had married and more like someone wearing his features as a disguise.
The scream from below ended abruptly.
“Voss!” I shouted.
No answer.
One of the agents hurried down the stairs with a flashlight and weapon drawn.
Rebecca moved toward Nora and me.
“We need to get her out of this area.”
She was right.
Every instinct I had told me to follow Voss into the hidden level. Every instinct I had as a mother told me not to let Nora out of my arms.
Mother won.
I carried her toward the front hall.
Julian called after me.
“Mara, listen to me.”
I did not turn around.
“You don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I understand enough.”
“Those people will come here.”
That stopped me.
I looked over my shoulder.
“What people?”
Julian glanced at the agents holding him.
He lowered his voice.
“If those drives were connected when the door opened, they received an alert.”
“Who received it?”
He shook his head.
“I won’t talk in front of them.”
Voss’s voice rose from the staircase.
“You don’t get to choose the audience anymore.”
He emerged with blood running down the side of his face.
Dr. Brennan rushed toward him.
“What happened?”
“Pressure cartridge hidden inside the server cabinet.”
“You were shot?”
“Metal fragment. I’m fine.”
He was not fine, but he remained standing.
Behind him, an agent carried a small black server unit wrapped in a fire blanket.
“The main drives are destroyed,” Voss said. “This unit disconnected before the purge completed.”
Julian closed his eyes.
That reaction confirmed the device mattered.
Voss noticed.
“What is on it?”
Julian remained silent.
Voss nodded to the agent.
“Secure him in the dining room.”
Camille was escorted beside him.
As she passed me, she looked at Nora.
For once, there was no superiority in her expression.
Only fear.
“Nora,” she said, “where did you put the brass key?”
My daughter went rigid.
I turned toward Camille.
“Do not speak to her.”
“But if the key is still here—”
Julian twisted away from the agent restraining him.
“Stop talking!”
Camille stared at him.
“You said they would never hurt a child.”
The room went quiet.
Voss stepped between them.
“Who are they?”
Camille’s lips parted.
Julian said her name again, this time softly.
It sounded almost affectionate.
A warning disguised as tenderness.
Camille looked at him.
Then she looked at the federal agents, the evidence box, and the house she had believed would soon belong to her.
“They operate through the foundation warehouses,” she whispered. “I don’t know all their names.”
Julian cursed under his breath.
“Take them separately,” Voss ordered.
When they were gone, I carried Nora upstairs.
Her bedroom door had been fitted with a lock on the outside.
I stared at it for several seconds.
The brass was new.
There were scratches around the handle where small fingernails had tried to reach beneath the door.
Nora watched me.
“Camille said it was for my safety.”
I forced my voice to remain steady.
“It wasn’t.”
“I knew.”
Inside, the room looked almost untouched at first glance. The white bedspread was tucked neatly beneath the pillows. Stuffed animals sat in a straight line along the shelf. Her small piano remained beneath the window.
Then I noticed what was missing.
The family photographs were gone.
The framed picture of my mother was gone.
The purple drawing Nora made for me before my assignment was gone.
The closet contained only three nightdresses and two school uniforms.
“Where are your clothes?”
“Camille gave them away.”
“Your winter coat?”
“She said I didn’t need it because I wasn’t allowed outside.”
Dr. Brennan stood behind me.
Her face had become very still.
“We should take Nora to the hospital,” she said. “She needs imaging, bloodwork and a complete forensic exam.”
Nora began shaking.
“No hospital.”
I sat on the edge of the bed with her.
“Sweetheart, Elise needs to make sure you’re okay.”
“They’ll take me away.”
“No one is taking you from me.”
“Camille said the police take bad children.”
Dr. Brennan crouched beside us.
“The police do not take children because they are bad. And you are not bad.”
Nora looked unconvinced.
I brushed hair from her forehead.
“I will stay beside you the entire time.”
“What about the house?”
“The agents will protect it.”
“What about the key?”
There it was again.
I lowered my voice.
“What key did you find?”
Nora glanced toward the door.
“Daddy said I wasn’t supposed to go downstairs. But one night, I heard him talking.”
“With Camille?”
“No. With the silver man.”
“What silver man?”
“He wore a ring shaped like a snake. It was silver.”
Dr. Brennan and I exchanged a look.
“What were they talking about?” I asked.
“You.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did they say?”
Nora concentrated.
“The silver man said the ice would solve the problem. Daddy said you were smarter than the other agents.”
The abandoned warehouse near the Alaskan coast returned to me.
The sabotaged heating system.
The locked exterior doors.
The night someone tried to trap my team inside while temperatures dropped below zero.
We escaped because I noticed frost forming along the wrong wall and realized a concealed service tunnel ran behind it.
Two agents from the advance team had not been as fortunate.
They disappeared forty-eight hours earlier.
“The ice would solve the problem,” I repeated.
Nora nodded.
“Then Daddy saw me.”
“What did he do?”
“He grabbed my arm.”
Her voice became smaller.
“He asked what I heard. I said nothing. He said liars go to prison.”
Dr. Brennan placed a hand over her own mouth.
“Where was Camille?”
“Sleeping.”
“Did Julian hurt you?”
Nora hesitated.
The hesitation was my answer.
“He squeezed my arm,” she said. “Then he put me in the basement room.”
“The hidden basement?”
She nodded.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t windows.”
I could hear my heartbeat.
“What was inside?”
“A chair. A camera. A table with papers.”
I remembered Camille’s words.
The files were only for the custody case.
“Nora, did anyone ask you questions in that room?”
“Daddy told me to say you never called. He made me practice.”
“Practice what?”
“That I was scared of you. That you shouted. That you left me alone.”
Each sentence had probably been prepared for a judge.
Julian had not simply neglected our daughter.
He had been manufacturing evidence.
“He recorded you?” I asked.
Nora nodded.
“I didn’t say it right, so Camille got angry.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
Only one.
Then I held her face carefully between my hands.
“None of this was your fault.”
“I know.”
Her answer surprised me.
She looked toward the piano.
“I knew they were lying because you told me truth doesn’t change just because someone says it louder.”
I had said that to her after a classmate accused her of taking a box of crayons.
She remembered.
“Where is the brass key?” I asked.
Nora climbed down from my lap.
Her knees nearly gave way.
I caught her.
“Let me carry you.”
“No. I can show you.”
She crossed the room slowly and sat on the piano bench. Her fingers touched three keys, playing the opening notes of the melody she had been humming downstairs.
Then she lifted the narrow wooden panel beneath the keyboard.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside was an empty velvet space.
Nora stared at it.
“It was here.”
“What else was in the compartment?”
“My music box.”
The gift I had not yet given her was still inside my duffel bag downstairs, but she owned another one—a small white box that had belonged to my mother.
“Where is it now?” I asked.
“Camille took it this morning.”
A knock sounded at the open door.
Voss stood in the hallway with a temporary bandage pressed to his temple.
“The server unit is encrypted,” he said. “But we recovered a partial directory.”
“What did it contain?”
“Video files labeled with Nora’s name.”
My daughter lowered her head.
Voss’s voice softened.
“There were also payment ledgers and shipping schedules. We need the encryption key.”
“The brass key may be physical access to something else,” I said.
“Or it may contain a storage device.”
I looked at the empty compartment.
“Camille has the music box.”
Voss nodded.
“We searched her purse. It isn’t there.”
“Her room?”
“Agents are checking it.”
Nora touched my sleeve.
“She didn’t keep it.”
“Where did she take it?”
“I heard her talking on the phone.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘I found what the child stole.’ Then she said she would bring it to the Winter Garden.”
Voss frowned.
“The Winter Garden?”
Rebecca appeared behind him.
“It’s a private reception room at the Mercer Foundation headquarters.”
I stood.
“When?”
Nora looked toward the clock on her wall.
“She said before midnight.”
Voss checked his watch.
It was 8:41.
“We secure the hospital first,” he said. “Then we move on the foundation.”
“No,” Nora whispered.
Everyone looked at her.
“The silver man is already there.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She reached beneath the piano bench and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
It was one of her drawings.
A tall building stood beneath a black sky. She had drawn a silver snake around the top floor and a bird symbol beside the entrance.
At the bottom, two figures stood next to several blue boxes.
One was labeled DADDY.
The other had no face.
Above them, Nora had written four words in purple crayon.
MIDNIGHT MAKES MOMMY DISAPPEAR.
Voss read the sentence twice.
Then his phone rang.
He answered without looking away from the drawing.
“Voss.”
Silence.
His expression changed.
“When?”
Another pause.
“We’re on our way.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The security system at Mercer Foundation headquarters just went offline.”
Rebecca looked toward the drawing.
May you like
Voss reached for his weapon.
“And someone used Julian’s executive code to enter the Winter Garden.”
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