Chapter 10 - The Fall Between Floors.
The service elevator carried Rowan, Evan, and Marcus toward the seventeenth floor.
Marcus held the founder's key against the control panel.
“The stalled car is three feet below the landing,” he said.
“We can access it from the upper hatch.”
Rowan watched his reflection in the metal doors.
“Who were you talking to in the lobby?”
“The head of medical security.”
“A hotel does not have medical security.”
The elevator shuddered.
Evan hit the emergency stop.
The button did nothing.
Their car dropped.
Rowan slammed against the wall as lights streaked past the narrow window.
Evan forced his fingers into the inner door and braced his feet.
Marcus screamed for the brakes.
The car stopped so violently that the ceiling panel broke loose.
They hung between floors twelve and thirteen.
Marcus lay stunned beside the control panel.
Evan climbed through the ceiling hatch.
Rowan followed into the dark shaft.
The counterweight cables trembled above them.
From the adjacent shaft came three weak knocks.
Elise was alive in the stalled executive car.
Evan stretched a maintenance bridge across the gap.
Rowan crawled toward the other car while Marcus climbed behind her.
Halfway across, he grabbed her ankle.
“Give me the encrypted drive.”
Rowan kicked his hand away.
“You tried to kill us.”
“If I wanted you dead, you would never have reached the lobby.”
A cable snapped overhead.
Evan pulled Rowan onto the executive car.
Marcus barely caught the bridge before it fell.
Inside, they found the wheelchair but not Elise.
A phone had been placed on the seat, playing a recording of her breathing.
Rowan picked up the blanket and found one of Elise's brass suns sewn into the hem.
It had been left there deliberately.
Elise had marked the route for her daughter before the sedative took full effect.
Another sun lay near the rear maintenance hatch.
Evan opened it and found a smear of blood leading upward toward the roof ladder.
“She fought them,” he said.
Rowan closed her hand around the tiny symbol.
The woman who had hidden for twenty-four years had not run this time.
The kidnapping was another diversion.
Rowan turned on Marcus.
“Where is she?”
“Ask Miriam.”
Evan searched the car and found a strip of cream fabric caught in the rear hatch.
It matched Miriam's bloodstained sleeve.
Marcus pulled himself inside.
“Miriam designed the dormant trust.”
“She knew exactly what would happen when Rowan crossed the logo.”
Rowan remembered the antidote waiting in Miriam's bag.
“She knew the tea would be poisoned because she poisoned it.”
Marcus shook his head.
“She needed Elise weak enough to move.”
The phone rang on the wheelchair.
Rowan answered.
Miriam's voice came through calmly.
“Bring Marcus and the founder's key to the roof.”
“Let my mother go.”
“At midnight, the trust chooses between blood and service.”
“Your grandfather made that choice impossible.”
The line ended.
Marcus looked at the frozen floor display.
It read 11:58.
Then he told Rowan the secret he had hidden longer than the pension theft.
“Elise never named your father because your father is standing beside you.”
Rowan looked at Evan.
Marcus touched his own chest.
“I am the reason you were born.”
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THE WOMAN BENEATH THE CHANDELIERS
