Chapter 9
Elena didn't pull the curtain aside. She pulled it forward.
She gripped the velvet at the bottom and lifted, and the whole panel came away from the wall on small hooks, revealing what the shadow had always hidden. Behind it wasn't just a doorway threshold into the office. It was a deeper alcove, paneled in the same dark wood, but with a vertical seam three feet in from the office doorframe. A narrow door, painted to match the paneling, with no handle — only a small brass keyhole at waist height and a recessed pull you had to know to feel for.
My father's safe room inventory had listed it years ago. I'd thought it was sealed over during the renovation.
Elena crouched and brushed dust from the bottom edge. "Daniel found this when he fixed the heat," she whispered. "He told me the mansion had a housekeeper's passage from the office to the utility room. For staff to come and go without crossing the family. He drew it for me once on a napkin."
She looked up at me. "The brass key."
I pulled the key from the safe out of my pocket. It was old, blackened, with a single tooth. It matched the keyhole.
Outside the hall, I could hear the men returning. One said, "Got the office key," and another's shoes squeaked on the wood. Thirty seconds, maybe.
I knelt and fitted the key in. It stuck. I jiggled it left, right, the metal cold against my fingers. Elena put her hand over mine to steady it, and together we turned.
Click. A soft chunk echoed inside the wall.
The panel popped in a quarter inch, and cold air sighed out, smelling of dust and old laundry soap and concrete. Utility room air.
I pulled. The door was narrow, maybe twenty-two inches wide, and opened inward into darkness. Inside was a tight passage, wood on one side, cinder block on the other, with a single low bulb dead overhead and a line of wire running along the ceiling. The floor was bare concrete.
Elena slipped in first, turning sideways with the flashlight. She didn't turn it on yet. I followed, ledger pressed to my ribs, and pulled the panel door shut behind us just as the office doorknob rattled again — this time with the right key.
From inside the passage, we heard the office door open. Curtain rings scraped. A voice said, "Desk's moved. They were here."
Another said, "Check behind the portrait — safe's closed but the tape's gone. They got it."
I held my breath and looked down the passage. At the far end, maybe fifteen feet away, a faint line of light showed under another door — the utility room. I could hear the dryer humming through that door, normal as a neighbor's house.
Elena touched my coat where the ledger was. "It's the only way out without a key," she whispered. "Daniel used it to get to the breaker box. It comes out behind the laundry sink."
Behind us, a hand hit the curtained alcove wall, searching. Knuckles rapped on paneling, moving closer to our hidden seam.
Elena switched on the flashlight, cupped like before, and pointed it at the floor ahead, not at the door behind us.
May you like
"Go," she breathed. "Before they find the seam."
I put my hand on her back and we moved forward through the narrow dark, the velvet curtain and its false wall closing over the office we left behind, while the men in suits stood in that office turning over the rug for a book that was now zipped inside my coat.
