Chapter 3
The door didn't click. It sighed. Old paint cracking along the edge, wood swelling with the house's heat. It opened three inches and stuck.
The woman didn't force it. She put her shoulder against it and leaned, slow pressure instead of a yank. I put my hand flat beside hers and pushed. The gap widened enough for a body turned sideways. Cool air hit my face — uncirculated, dusty, the service passage that ran behind the east wing. I'd never used it. Staff did.
Behind us, in the office, the man who had found something said, "Not it. Decoy ledger. Victor's handwriting but wrong year."
Another voice, irritated: "Then where?"
The woman slipped through first. I followed, ribs screaming when I compressed to fit. The velvet curtain brushed my coat and fell back into place behind us, dark and still, hiding the narrow door again. We were in black except for the thin light bleeding under the passage door at the far end.
She pulled the panel shut until it was a hair's width from closed — not latched, no click — and then grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down the passage. We moved bent slightly, hands out for the low ceiling beams, stocking feet or soft shoes making no sound on the bare wood. My office light disappeared. The voices faded to murmurs through the wall.
At the end of the passage she stopped at a small utility room: mop sink, folded linens, a single bare bulb with a pull chain. She didn't pull it. She shut the passage door behind us and leaned against it, finally letting out a breath that shook.
We stood there in the dim spill from a high frosted window. I could see her properly now. Late twenties, brown hair coming loose from a clip, maid uniform buttoned neat to the collar despite the hour, white cuffs slightly frayed. The ring again. And eyes that weren't deferential or scared in the way staff got scared. They were calculating.
"You knew about the curtain," I said. My voice came out rougher than I wanted, low and dry. "You knew they'd come."
"I knew someone would," she said. She didn't look away.
"Why are you awake?" I asked, echoing what she'd said to me behind the curtain, what she'd asked when she first put her finger to my mouth.
Her mouth twitched. Not a smile. "Because you bled on the kitchen floor at ten and said you were fine."
That stopped me. I had. I'd come in from the side entrance, hand pressed to my side, told her to go home. She hadn't.
"You walk in there, you die," she said, repeating the man's warning, but looking at me. "He was right. If you'd walked into that office when they called your name, they'd have —" She stopped, swallowed. "They think Marino's alive."
"Is he?" I asked.
She shook her head once. "I don't know who Marino is. But they said if he survived, he'll come here. That means they want you and him in the same place."
I stepped closer, wincing. "Who are you?"
It was my line from behind the curtain, thrown back at her. She stared at me, then down at the ring on her finger, then back up. For a long second I thought she'd give me the same answer — ask me when we survive this — and keep evading.
Instead she lifted her left hand, showed me the band. "My husband worked for your father. Maintenance. He disappeared last spring after he logged something about a red book in the safe room inventory."
The ledger. My father's ledger. The one the three men thought was mine.
Outside, down the passage, we heard a door open. Not the panel we'd come through — the main hallway door, heavy and loud. Footsteps. One of the suits, checking the hall. The beam of a flashlight swept under our utility room door.
May you like
She killed the thought mid-sentence, grabbed my arm, and pulled me behind the linen shelf as the handle rattled.
The light paused outside. Someone tried the knob.
