Chapter 3 - The Name in the Dark.
Ethan dropped the fire poker and reached blindly for Lily.
His fingers found empty air.
“Lily!”
A body slammed into his shoulder from the left.
He hit the marble floor hard enough to lose his breath.
Footsteps scattered in three directions.
Claire shouted Mason's name.
Mason cursed somewhere near the stairs.
Then Ethan heard Lily crying beneath the console table beside the wall.
He crawled toward the sound and wrapped both arms around her.
“I'm here.”
“Don't let her take me.”
“I won't.”
The emergency lights flickered on thirty seconds later, filling the foyer with dim red illumination.
Claire was standing near the stairs.
Mason was gone.
The broken suitcase remained open beside the fireplace, but the guardianship papers had vanished.
So had Claire's phone.
Ethan looked at her.
“Where is Mason?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to understand that someone just cut the power.”
Ethan stared at the fuse-panel indicator near the kitchen corridor.
The outage was limited to the mansion.
Someone inside the house had done it.
Lily still held Hannah's photograph.
Ethan bent close to her.
“Did Mom give you that picture?”
Lily shook her head.
“I found it behind her dresser when Claire moved everything.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Claire interrupted.
“She was going through private things.”
Ethan ignored her.
“Why were you in Mom's room?”
Lily swallowed.
“Because I heard Claire tell Mason they had to clear it before you came back.”
Claire's eyes sharpened.
“That is enough.”
“No, it isn't.”
Ethan took Lily's hand and moved toward the west hallway.
Claire followed.
“Where are you going?”
“To the blue nursery.”
For the first time since Ethan entered the house, true fear appeared on Claire's face.
“There is nothing in that room.”
Hannah had decorated the blue nursery before Lily was born, but after the baby moved upstairs, the room had become a storage space.
Ethan had not entered it since Hannah died.
Claire stepped in front of the hallway.
“The police will be here any minute.”
“I haven't called them yet.”
Claire froze.
Ethan saw his chance.
“You were waiting for someone else to call them.”
A distant siren sounded beyond the gates.
Lily flinched at the sound and squeezed Ethan's fingers until they hurt.
He realized she had been trained to fear the arrival of adults who were supposed to help her.
That frightened him almost as much as the suitcase.
Claire smiled without warmth.
“Maybe they were already on their way.”
Ethan understood then that the staged scene had begun before he entered the house.
Someone expected the police to arrive and find him holding a weapon.
The entire scene had been arranged so that his most natural reaction as a father could be presented as proof that he should lose his child.
Someone expected Lily to be gone.
He pulled her down the hall toward the nursery.
Behind them, Claire called out.
“Ethan, if you open that wall, you will destroy everything Hannah tried to protect.”
He stopped at the nursery door.
Lily looked up at him.
“Daddy, who is Victor?”
Ethan stared at the dark room beyond the doorway.
May you like
“A man I trusted with everything.”
From somewhere inside the wall came a faint electronic beep.
