Chapter 10 - The House Takes a Side.
The pendant signal went dead.
Lucas was in the truck before anyone could stop him.
Amelia followed, taking the computer and the partial confession with her.
Gideon was too weak to travel, so Ruth remained at the farmhouse with the doctor.
“Bring Vanessa back if she is alive,” Gideon said.
The words contained no certainty.
Vale Manor stood behind police barricades when Amelia and Lucas arrived.
Reporters crowded the gates, drawn by Margaret's accusations and the smoke visible from the earlier nursery fire.
Lucas could not enter without being recognized.
Amelia remembered the servants' tunnel beneath the glass greenhouse and led him through the flooded garden.
They emerged inside the old clinic below the dining room.
Medical restraints hung from one wall.
Ruth's blood marked the floor where she had been held.
On a steel table lay Vanessa's hidden transmitter, smashed but not bloody.
“She may have escaped the blow,” Amelia said.
A faint tapping answered from behind the wall.
Lucas removed a vent cover and found Vanessa trapped inside a maintenance cavity.
Her temple was bruised, and her wrists were tied with the blue sash from Margaret's dress robe.
“The hammer hit the table,” she whispered.
“Daniel pushed me aside before Mother swung.”
For one confused second, Vanessa had believed her father was protecting her.
Then Daniel locked her in the wall and told Margaret he would dispose of her after the board vote.
Amelia cut the ties.
Vanessa looked at her bruised face and could not hold her gaze.
“I am sorry.”
“Help us finish this.”
It was not forgiveness, but it was a door.
They climbed toward the ballroom, where the Vale board had begun its emergency meeting.
Margaret stood beneath another chandelier and described Lucas as unstable.
Daniel displayed a doctored video of him attacking Officer Harlan.
Amelia connected the computer to the manor's internal screen system.
Vanessa walked into the ballroom first.
The board members stared as if a ghost had interrupted them.
“My mother assaulted me and ordered Daniel Price to hide me until this vote was over.”
Margaret remained perfectly composed.
“My daughter is in shock.”
Amelia played Daniel's recorded statement about Ruth and Saint Agnes.
The board began whispering.
Daniel challenged the recording as manipulated.
Lucas entered and announced that Gideon was alive.
That shattered Margaret's calm at last.
She ordered security to remove them, but the guards did not move.
The head of security, Marcus Lee, removed his earpiece.
“Mr. Gideon Vale hired us,” he said.
“Not you.”
The house seemed to change allegiance in a single breath.
Margaret backed toward the original trust vault behind the ballroom portrait.
Daniel slipped beside her and entered a code.
The portrait opened, revealing shelves of ledgers and sealed evidence boxes.
Before anyone could reach them, Daniel poured lighter fluid across the records.
Margaret struck a match.
Vanessa lunged for her mother's wrist.
The flame fell onto the reflective floor instead.
Fire raced along an invisible trail leading away from the vault.
It traveled through the ballroom doors, down the corridor, and into the dining room.
There, the flames formed a burning spiral around Margaret's empty chair.
May you like
From beneath the floor came three desperate knocks.
THE JADE SNAIL | A VALE FAMILY THRILLER
