Chapter 4 - Someone Inside the House
I called Marco before the elevator doors closed.
"Lock the house."
"Already happening."
"No one leaves. No one enters."
"What happened?"
"Someone photographed Mia ten minutes ago."
Silence.
Then Marco became the man I'd hired fifteen years earlier.
"I'll find them."
I drove myself.
Boston at three in the morning is a city pretending to sleep.
I broke every reasonable speed limit between Massachusetts General and Beacon Hill.
When I entered the house, twelve security men were searching it.
Grace stood in the foyer holding Lily.
Mia was beside her.
Alive.
Safe.
Terrified.
She ran to me.
I wasn't prepared for that.
Her arms wrapped around my waist.
"Mr. Duca!"
My hands hovered awkwardly before settling on her shoulders.
"I'm okay," she said.
She was comforting me.
A six-year-old child was comforting me.
That did something permanent to my understanding of the world.
"Did anyone come into your room?"
She shook her head.
"Did you hear anything?"
"No."
"Think."
Her brow furrowed.
"The vent."
"What about it?"
"It clicked."
Marco heard.
We exchanged a look.
The ventilation system.
Ten minutes later, we found a pinhole camera inside the guest-room vent.
Wireless.
Recently installed.
"Inside job," Marco said.
My staff numbered twenty-three.
Some had been with the Ducas longer than I'd been alive.
I gathered everyone in the ballroom.
Cooks.
Housekeepers.
Drivers.
Security.
Garden staff.
Grace stood at the edge of the room.
I watched faces.
Fear.
Confusion.
Resentment.
One person was too calm.
Edwin Pike.
My father's former valet.
Sixty-three.
Thirty-one years with my family.
He noticed me looking.
"Mr. Duca?"
"Empty your pockets."
His face changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
Marco moved.
Pike ran.
He made it twelve feet.
Marco tackled him against a table.
A transmitter fell from his jacket.
Grace gasped.
Pike began laughing.
"You're late, Nicholas."
I walked toward him.
"Who do you work for?"
"Your family."
"My family is standing in this room."
His smile widened.
"You still don't understand what your family is."
Marco pulled him upright.
"Talk."
Pike spat blood onto the floor.
"Ask Thomas why your mother left."
My body went rigid.
My mother, Evelyn Duca, had disappeared when I was twelve.
My father told me she'd chosen another life.
For twenty-three years, I'd believed him.
"Where is she?"
Pike smiled.
Then collapsed.
Poison capsule.
By the time the doctor reached him, he was dead.
Grace covered Mia's eyes.
I couldn't stop staring.
Pike had served breakfast at my table when I was a boy.
He'd taught me how to tie a Windsor knot.
He had betrayed us for decades.
Or maybe, as he'd claimed, he'd believed he was serving us.
Thomas arrived at the house just after sunrise against medical advice.
He looked at Pike's body and closed his eyes.
"He was one of Mercer's."
"For how long?"
"Before you were born."
I wanted to hit something.
Instead, I poured coffee.
"What happened to my mother?"
Thomas sat.
"She discovered your father's network."
"Mercer's network?"
"No."
I turned.
"My father's."
Thomas explained.
Antonio Duca hadn't merely been a businessman with criminal connections.
He had built a private intelligence network during the 1990s.
Politicians.
Judges.
Corporate executives.
Police.
Criminal organizations.
Antonio collected evidence as insurance.
Mercer had helped design the system.
Then he realized information was more profitable than loyalty.
"He wanted to sell secrets," Thomas said. "Your father wanted to bury the network."
"And my mother?"
"She found out both men were using the house."
"Where is she?"
Thomas hesitated.
"I don't know."
"Wrong answer."
"It's the truth."
"Did my father kill her?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"Then where did she go?"
"She took something Mercer desperately wanted."
"What?"
"A ledger."
I laughed without humor.
"Of course there's a ledger."
"Not paper."
"What, then?"
"Encrypted archive. Names. Payments. Evidence. Enough to destroy Mercer and half the people protecting him."
"And she disappeared with it."
"Yes."
Grace entered quietly.
"I know where it is."
Every man in the room turned.
She looked uncomfortable.
"Mia found something three months ago."
"What?"
"She was helping me dust the library."
Of course she was.
Grace continued.
"One of the books fell. There was a key inside."
Mia appeared behind her.
"I kept it."
Grace looked horrified.
"Mia!"
"I thought it was pretty."
She pulled a thin chain from beneath her dress.
A tiny brass key hung from it.
Thomas stood so quickly he nearly fell.
"Where did you find that?"
Mia pointed toward the library.
"The blue book."
Thomas whispered something.
"What?"
"Your mother."
He looked at me.
"She used blue books for dead drops."
We found the volume.
A first edition of The Secret Garden.
Inside the back cover was a handwritten inscription.
For Nicholas, when he is old enough to understand that locked doors are sometimes meant to protect what we love. — Mom
I couldn't breathe.
I'd never seen the book before.
Mia slipped the key into a tiny opening hidden beneath the spine.
Click.
The back cover released.
Inside was a memory card.
Thomas stared at it.
"That's impossible."
"What?"
"That technology didn't exist when Evelyn disappeared."
Meaning someone had returned later.
Someone who had access to my library.
Someone who knew my mother.
I inserted the card into an isolated laptop.
One video file appeared.
Date stamped six months earlier.
I opened it.
A woman's face filled the screen.
Older.
Gray streaks in dark hair.
But I knew those eyes.
My eyes.
My mother looked directly into the camera.
"Nicholas," she said, "if you're watching this, Mercer has found the house."
My knees almost gave out.
She was alive.
Or had been six months ago.
Then she said something stranger.
"Do not trust Thomas."
I slowly turned toward my uncle.
His face had gone white.
On the video, my mother continued.
"And whatever he tells you, do not let him find Grace Harper."
Grace stopped breathing.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Neither of us understood.
May you like
Then Evelyn Duca explained.
"Because Grace isn't who she thinks she is."
