CHAP 2 — THE SECOND ROOM
Police sirens reached Sterling House seven minutes later.
By then, Vivian had recovered enough to begin lying.
She did it beautifully.
Calmly.
Almost professionally.
She stood near the grand staircase with tears in her eyes and told the first officers that Oliver’s appearance was as shocking to her as it was to Conrad.
“I believed he was dead,” she insisted.
Conrad stared at her from across the ballroom.
“You were on the recording.”
“I don’t know what that device contains.”
“It contains your voice.”
“Something that sounds like my voice.”
The distinction was deliberate.
Conrad had spent thirty years around lawyers.
Vivian was already building reasonable doubt.
Marcus had disappeared during the confusion despite Conrad ordering every exit sealed.
Two guards claimed they had not seen him leave.
Hannah knew better.
“This house has tunnels,” she said.
Detective Lena Ortiz looked at her.
“What kind of tunnels?”
“Service corridors. Old ones.”
“You knew about them?”
“Not all of them.”
Hannah looked at the ruined wall.
“My mother worked here before I did.”
Conrad turned.
“I didn’t know that.”
“She worked for your parents.”
“What was her name?”
“Eleanor Price.”
Conrad remembered.
Quiet woman.
Dark hair.
Always carried peppermint candies in her apron.
She had died when Conrad was twenty-six.
“A fall,” he said.
Hannah’s expression changed.
“That’s what they told you.”
Before Conrad could question her, Oliver woke screaming.
He had fallen asleep on a sofa wrapped in Conrad’s tuxedo jacket while paramedics examined him.
Now he was kicking at the blanket.
“No! No basement!”
Conrad rushed over.
“You’re safe.”
Oliver grabbed his arm.
“Don’t let them take me downstairs.”
“Nobody is taking you anywhere.”
The paramedic gently asked, “Oliver, do you know how long you were in that room?”
The boy shook his head.
“Did someone bring you food?”
Another nod.
“Who?”
Oliver’s eyes moved toward Vivian.
She stood thirty feet away.
He whispered, “Sometimes her.”
Vivian immediately protested.
“He’s confused.”
Oliver recoiled.
Conrad’s face hardened.
“You don’t speak to him.”
“Conrad—”
“You don’t even look at him.”
Detective Ortiz stepped between them.
“Mrs. Sterling, we need you available for questioning.”
Vivian’s lawyer was already approaching through the front doors.
Of course.
Thomas Keene.
One of Manhattan’s most aggressive criminal defense attorneys.
Conrad had once hired him for a Sterling Global executive.
Now Vivian had apparently retained him before police even arrived.
That bothered Conrad.
How had she contacted him so quickly?
Then something else occurred to him.
Maybe she hadn’t.
Maybe Keene had already been expecting the call.
Ortiz ordered officers into the passage.
Conrad went with them despite every objection.
The narrow corridor extended behind nearly fifty feet of ballroom wall.
Electrical cables had been installed recently.
Small ventilation ducts ran along the ceiling.
This was not an abandoned architectural relic.
Someone had renovated it.
At the first steel door they found a room containing a mattress, bottled water, canned food, children’s books and a small battery lamp.
Conrad stopped breathing.
A blue sweater lay folded in one corner.
He recognized it.
Madeleine had bought it for Oliver shortly before the supposed hospital accident.
Conrad picked it up.
His hands shook.
On the wall beside the mattress were pencil marks.
Short vertical lines.
Hundreds of them.
Days.
Oliver had been counting days.
Hannah covered her mouth.
Officer Ruiz whispered, “Jesus.”
But the second room was worse.
It contained surveillance monitors.
One displayed the ballroom.
Another showed Conrad’s study.
Another showed the master bedroom.
Another showed Oliver’s old nursery.
Someone had been watching Sterling House from inside Sterling House.
Conrad stepped closer.
Most screens were dark.
One was still active.
The camera showed them standing inside the room.
“Somebody’s watching us right now,” Hannah said.
Ortiz immediately radioed her team.
Then Conrad noticed the desk.
Documents had been burned inside a metal wastebasket.
Most were destroyed.
One piece remained readable.
STERLING GLOBAL — SPECIAL BOARD RESOLUTION.
Below it:
Voting authority upon incapacity or death—
The rest was burned.
Conrad looked at Hannah.
“Someone built an operation inside my house.”
A police officer opened a narrow closet.
Inside were medical supplies.
Sedatives.
Syringes.
Prescription bottles.
Oliver’s name appeared on several labels.
Conrad nearly dropped the paper in his hand.
He had been told his son suffered catastrophic complications after a car accident.
The same accident that killed Madeleine.
Oliver supposedly survived for nine days before dying from neurological trauma.
Conrad had spent those nine days traveling between hospitals, boardrooms and a private clinic Vivian had recommended.
He suddenly remembered something.
He had never been allowed to enter Oliver’s room during the last two days.
The doctors said infection control.
Vivian had been the one delivering updates.
Conrad turned toward Detective Ortiz.
“I need you to find Dr. Adrian Reed.”
“Who?”
“He signed my son’s death certificate.”
A sound came from behind the second wall.
Everybody froze.
Scratching.
Officer Ruiz raised his flashlight.
Again.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Hannah stepped toward it.
“There’s another room.”
Police forced the panel.
Behind it was not a person.
It was a desk.
A hidden office.
On the desk sat a laptop, a stack of photographs and an envelope addressed in handwriting Conrad knew immediately.
His dead wife’s handwriting.
CONRAD — IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, DO NOT TRUST VIVIAN.
Conrad stared at the envelope.
Vivian had entered their lives six months before Madeleine died.
She had been the new charitable-foundation director.
Conrad had believed Madeleine liked her.
Apparently, Madeleine had feared her.
He opened the envelope.
Inside was one sentence.
She knows what Marcus and Barrett did.
Conrad’s heart stopped.
Barrett.
Graham Barrett.
His closest friend.
The chief financial officer of Sterling Global.
His son’s godfather.
Standing downstairs among the gala guests.
Conrad turned toward Ortiz.
“Lock the ballroom.”
May you like
“Why?”
“Because the person who helped steal my son may still be inside it.”
