Chapter 2 - The Name That Should Have Been Buried
“He said nobody would hear me scream.”
Claire's voice was so quiet that Roman almost missed the words.
The fluorescent light hummed above them.
“He told me to put my hands against the wall. I thought he was going to kill me. But then he asked whether you were sleeping upstairs.”
Roman looked toward the dead man.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn't know.”
“And then?”
“He grabbed me. I tried to get away, but he pulled out a knife.”
Her eyes moved toward the utility blade on the concrete.
“I reached for the shelf. There was a heavy jar of tomatoes. I hit him with it, and he fell against the broken shelving. I didn't even know he'd been cut until he stopped moving.”
Roman glanced at the collapsed wood.
A jagged metal bracket protruded from the wreckage at precisely the height of the wound in the man's neck.
Claire followed his gaze.
“I tried to help him.”
“I believe you.”
“You don't understand. I pressed a towel against his neck. I called out to him. I thought he was breathing, and then he just—”
Her voice broke.
Roman stepped closer, but stopped when she recoiled.
“Claire. Look at me.”
She raised her eyes.
“You were defending yourself.”
“I killed somebody.”
“You survived somebody who came here armed.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Roman asked the question that would change everything.
“Did he say anything else?”
Claire hesitated.
“He had a phone. It rang while he was trying to get the panel open.”
“Did he answer?”
“Yes. He said he needed another minute.”
“Who was calling?”
“I don't know. But he used a name.”
Roman waited.
Claire's lips trembled.
“He said, ‘Tell Evelyn I'm inside.’”
The color drained from Roman's face.
It happened so quickly that Claire took a frightened step backward.
“Mr. Vale?”
Roman stared at her.
“Say that again.”
“Evelyn.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
Roman turned toward the open electrical cabinet.
For twenty-three years, that name had belonged to a dead woman.
His mother.
Evelyn Vale had been buried on a cold November afternoon when Roman was eighteen. He had watched the coffin descend into the ground. He remembered his father's hand gripping his shoulder and the priest's voice disappearing beneath the rain.
He remembered something else.
His mother's funeral had been closed-casket.
Roman had never questioned it.
Until now.
He removed his phone.
Claire watched his expression harden.
“What's wrong?”
Roman dialed a number from memory.
A man answered on the second ring.
“Boss?”
“Adrian. Code Black.”
There was a pause.
“Confirmed?”
“Immediately. Lock down the property. No one enters or leaves. Disconnect external security access. I want every employee accounted for, and I want Dr. Mercer brought here.”
“What's happened?”
“We have an intruder in the lower pantry. He's dead.”
“Understood.”
“And Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“Until I tell you otherwise, trust nobody who knew my mother.”
Roman ended the call.
Claire stared at him.
“Your mother?”
Roman looked at her.
“The man said Evelyn?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say Vale?”
Claire shook her head.
Roman studied the corpse again.
He turned the dead man's face toward the light.
There was something familiar about the shape of his jaw.
Not someone Roman recognized.
Someone he resembled.
A face from a photograph Roman hadn't seen in twenty years.
He crouched and examined the man's left hand.
A small blue tattoo sat between his thumb and forefinger.
Three tiny vertical lines.
Roman went motionless.
The mark belonged to a private security unit his father had supposedly disbanded after Evelyn's death.
Roman had personally signed the paperwork destroying its remaining records.
Yet a man bearing that mark had just entered his home.
“Mr. Vale?”
Claire's voice pulled him back.
He took off his gray T-shirt's overshirt, which he had brought down from the kitchen, and draped it around her shoulders.
“Come upstairs.”
“What about him?”
“He isn't going anywhere.”
Roman led her toward the staircase.
At the top, heavy security shutters began descending across the estate's ground-floor windows.
Electronic locks clicked through the hallways.
Outside, floodlights illuminated the gardens.
Claire stopped.
“You're locking everyone inside?”
“For now.”
“Why?”
Roman turned.
“Because somebody sent that man to find something in my house.”
“What?”
“I don't know.”
He looked down the stairs.
“But whoever sent him knew about a security system that hasn't been used in twenty-three years.”
They reached the kitchen.
Adrian Cross, Roman's head of security, entered through the rear hallway.
At thirty-eight, Adrian was a former military investigator with close-cropped hair and an old burn scar beneath his left ear. He had worked for Roman for twelve years.
He looked at Claire's bloody sleeve.
Then at Roman.
“Medical team is coming. Everyone's being checked.”
“Good.”
Adrian hesitated.
“There's a problem.”
Roman's eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“The security system shows an authorized access code at 2:07.”
“Whose?”
Adrian held up a tablet.
“The code belonged to your father.”
Roman felt the room grow colder.
His father, Gabriel Vale, had died fourteen years earlier.
Roman stared at the screen.
The code was unmistakable.
GABRIEL-01.
“That's impossible,” Roman said.
“I know.”
“Who reactivated it?”
“We're checking.”
Adrian looked toward the basement.
“There's something else. The intruder didn't come through the front gate.”
“Then where?”
“The old drainage tunnel.”
Roman's stomach tightened.
That tunnel had been sealed after his mother's death.
Only three people had ever possessed its original plans.
His father.
His mother.
And the man Roman had personally executed for betraying the family.
Silas Voss.
Roman had watched Silas fall from the old quarry bridge twenty years ago.
Now, as Adrian enlarged a grainy image recovered from a disconnected camera, Roman saw the intruder entering the tunnel beside another figure.
A tall man wearing a dark coat.
The second figure turned briefly toward the camera.
Roman gripped the counter.
May you like
Because the face on the screen belonged to Silas Voss.
And the dead man Roman had thrown into the quarry twenty years earlier was apparently walking beneath his house.
