Chapter 4 - The Salt Marsh
In the main security hub beneath the central courtyard, Anthony Caruso stood behind Mateo, staring at a blank monitor.
Camera 09—which covered the east service corridor on the second floor—had gone to static at 3:12 a.m.
"It’s not a power failure," Mateo said, his fingers clicking furiously across his keyboard. "The telemetry line was physically cut inside the riser wall. Someone opened the old chimney shaft behind the library."
Anthony didn't answer. He drew his weapon from his shoulder holster—a heavy, custom German pistol with a matte-black finish—and pulled the slide back three millimeters to check the brass rim of the chambered round.
"Where is the secondary feed?" Anthony asked.
"There isn't one for the nursery corridor, boss," Mateo said, his voice dropping into panic. "Claire... she didn't want cameras near the girl's bedroom. You promised her three years ago that the second floor wouldn't have eyes."
Anthony closed his eyes for one second.
“She doesn't need the man everyone else thinks you are,” Claire’s voice echoed in his memory, clear and quiet against the hum of the monitors. “She needs her dad.”
"Mateo," Anthony said.
"Sir?"
"Call the dock detail. Tell Frank Vance to bring twelve men to the south wall. Tell him the Morettis didn't leave Vancouver."
"Boss... Frank’s brother, Marcus... he’s been missing from the Terminal detail since Tuesday," Mateo stammered, his face white in the screen light. "Frank said he was sick in Tacoma."
Anthony didn't wait for the rest of the sentence. He turned and ran for the service stairs.
Upstairs, in the quiet nursery, Marcus Vance took one step toward Emily.
"Move away from the child, Emily," he said gently, as if speaking to a dull student. "This isn't your business. You were paid to be a quiet maid who didn't ask questions about her wages. You’ve been very useful. The agency in Bellevue took five thousand of my dollars to put your application at the top of Mateo’s desk."
"Why?" Emily asked, her voice steadying despite the terror that was turning her hands to ice. She kept her body firmly anchored between him and the bed. "Why Sophie?"
"Because Anthony Caruso killed my brother’s business seven years ago," Marcus said, his eyes narrowing into two thin, yellow slits. "He took the Sound. He took the shipping lanes. He turned us into beggars while he built this stone castle on the hill. My brother Frank was too weak to hit back—he took Anthony’s gold and sat on the docks like a faithful dog."
He lifted the iron scriber, the point catching the dim amber light from the hallway.
"I’m not a dog, Emily. I’ve been living inside these walls for three weeks. The old servant tunnels from the 1920s go everywhere. I’ve watched him eat his dinner alone. I’ve watched him look at his mute little girl and rot from the inside out."
He took another step forward.
"The blue snake was my idea," Marcus whispered, a dry chuckle rattling in his throat. "I dropped the red chalk into her lap while she was sitting by the conservatory three weeks ago. I told her if she drew it for her father, her mother would come back. She’s such a clever little thing. She drew it every time she thought he was watching."
Sophie moved behind Emily.
The child was wide awake now. She hadn't screamed. She hadn't made a sound. But she had pulled herself up against the mahogany headboard, her thin legs tucked into her chest, her small hands holding the broken piece of blue chalk like a knife.
Her brown eyes were wide, fixed not on Marcus, but on Emily’s back.
"She knew," Emily whispered, realization striking her like a physical blow. "She drew me under the table because she knew I was the only one who didn't belong to this house. She was waiting for me."
"She’s a Caruso," Marcus sneered, his arm rising. "They all die slow."
He lunged forward, the needle-point of the tool driving straight for Emily’s neck.
Emily didn't think about her training as an illustrator, her lost engagement, or the fifty thousand dollars of debt that had brought her to this dark house on the cliff. She thought of her father scrubbing oil paint off his knuckles at the kitchen sink in Portland.
“If a child draws something, they’re showing you where they’re hiding.”
She didn't dodge.
She seized the heavy brass table lamp sitting on the nightstand—a fifteen-pound piece of solid Victorian casting—and swung it with both hands, using the full weight of her broad shoulders and torso.
The heavy base caught Marcus Vance full in the side of the head.
The crack was like a dry pine log snapping in a frost.
Marcus went down sideways, his coat slapping hard against the rug, the steel scriber flying from his hand and sliding under the wardrobe. The red chalk shattered against the mahogany floorboards, spreading a bright, bloody dust across the carpet.
He wasn't dead. He let out a low, wet groan, his fingers clawing at the rug as he tried to push his lean frame up.
Emily didn't wait for him to recover.
She turned, grabbed Sophie from the bed, and wrapped her heavy arms around the small girl, pulling her tight against her chest.
"Hold on," Emily barked into the child's hair.
She ran for the small door behind the wardrobe—the private staircase Anthony had shown her three hours ago.
May you like
She pulled the gold key from her apron, jammed it into the brass keyhole, and twisted it until the bolt retracted with a heavy clunk.
She threw her weight against the door, plunging into the narrow, unlit spiral of stone stairs that dropped into the foundations of the house just as the main door of the nursery was kicked off its hinges behind her.
