Chapter 13 - Fire in the West Wing.
The bullet had struck Noah high in the shoulder.
Keene pulled him behind a stone column while Adrian chased Conrad into the ballroom.
Guests from the luncheon had vanished, leaving wet flowers and overturned chairs behind.
Conrad ran through the far doors with the ledger beneath his coat.
Adrian followed him into the west wing.
The first flames climbed the chapel curtains.
Heat shattered one of the dead clock faces as he passed.
The hands dropped from 4:16 and struck the floor together.
For six years, Eleanor had frozen the house at the hour she claimed Sophie died.
Now the false time broke apart beneath Adrian's feet.
Eleanor waited in the room of dead clocks beside Bella.
Conrad placed the ledger in her hands.
"Release my daughter," Adrian said.
Eleanor turned the book over as though examining a gift.
"You were easier to manage when you believed love had killed your wife."
Bella twisted against the tape.
"Mom is alive, and everyone knows now."
Eleanor slapped the arm of the chair, close enough to make Bella flinch.
"Your mother was weak."
"My mother survived you," Bella said.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
Adrian stepped forward.
Conrad aimed the pistol at his chest.
Above them, a ventilation grate shifted.
Sophie dropped from the service shaft onto Conrad's back.
The weapon skidded beneath a clock.
Adrian tackled Conrad while Sophie tore the tape from Bella's wrists.
Bella kicked the pistol deeper into the smoke before Conrad could reach it.
Sophie pulled her close, but Bella touched her mother's face as though confirming she was solid.
"You called me," Bella said.
"Every night I could," Sophie replied.
Their first embrace lasted only seconds before the ceiling groaned above them.
Eleanor threw the ledger into a black trash bag and fled through the hidden clock door.
Fire blocked the chapel exit.
Bella led Sophie toward the broken stained-glass window, but burning wood crashed between them.
Adrian lifted Bella over the debris and went back for Sophie.
Conrad grabbed his ankle from the smoke.
"If I burn, you burn."
Noah appeared with blood darkening his shirt and struck Conrad's arm with a brass candlestick.
Together the brothers carried Sophie through the window.
Tomas activated the garden irrigation pumps.
Water poured through the west-wing ceiling as firefighters reached the estate.
Miles tried to escape in a service vehicle, but Ruth blocked the gate with Tomas's truck.
Keene arrested him beside the white roses.
Eleanor was gone.
The clock tunnel opened near the river, where tire tracks disappeared onto the highway.
Federal agents recovered Conrad, Sutton, and the clinic records.
They did not recover the original ledger.
Investigators found Eleanor's abandoned car near the river with her white robe folded across the driver's seat.
The performance of elegance had been discarded, but the woman herself was nowhere nearby.
A highway camera captured someone in a nurse's uniform boarding a bus toward the capital.
Eleanor was already moving toward the judge who had signed Bella's first custody order.
Without it, Conrad claimed the online copies were fabricated.
Eleanor's lawyers obtained an emergency hearing before sunrise.
As paramedics wrapped Bella's wrists, she looked at the smoking mansion.
"The bag came back," she whispered.
Adrian thought she meant the one Eleanor carried away.
Bella shook her head.
May you like
"No, Dad."
"The first bag never left."
