Chapter 7 - The Room of Dead Clocks.
Adrian, Keene, and Tomas escaped through a maintenance tunnel while Miles searched the darkened white room.
The tunnel opened behind the chapel in the west wing.
Dust covered the floor, but small white sneaker prints crossed it.
Adrian followed them past twelve silent clocks.
Each face showed 4:16, the time Sophie's car had supposedly burned.
The brass key opened the door beneath the largest clock.
Bella sat inside on an old trunk, hugging her knees.
She ran into Adrian's arms.
"Grandma said you would stop loving me when you read the paper."
Adrian held her face between his hands.
"No test can make you less mine."
"But what if it is true?"
"Then I became your father the first time you fell asleep on my chest."
Bella's sob broke into a small laugh.
Adrian told her about that night in the hospital.
She had been angry at the world and refused to sleep for anyone else.
When he placed one finger against her palm, she gripped it and went silent.
Sophie had taken a photograph of them and written, SHE CHOSE HIM, across the back.
"Blood can tell us where a body began," Adrian said.
"It cannot tell us who stayed."
Bella leaned her forehead against his.
"You stayed."
"I will keep staying."
Keene found a window and called for state officers.
Before they arrived, the estate alarm began to howl.
Eleanor's voice filled the room through hidden speakers.
"Adrian has abducted a child from lawful custody."
She sounded sorrowful and reasonable.
"Please remain where you are until help arrives."
The west doors locked automatically.
Smoke seeped beneath the chapel door.
Miles had started a fire in the corridor.
Tomas smashed a stained-glass window with a candlestick.
Adrian lowered Bella through the opening to Keene.
As he climbed after them, Eleanor appeared beyond the smoke in her white robe.
"You think love makes you a father," she said.
"The law will disagree."
Adrian jumped to the grass.
Bella refused to release his neck until an officer pried her fingers apart one by one.
Adrian kept his voice calm and made her meet his eyes.
"Count the doors," he told her.
It was a game Sophie invented for frightening places.
Bella counted the chapel door, the garden gate, the broken window, and the tunnel behind the clock.
By the fourth door, she was breathing again.
State officers surrounded him before his feet touched the ground.
Conrad presented the emergency custody order and the paternity report.
Keene protested that the evidence had been manipulated.
The lead officer refused to look at the smoke pouring from the locked wing.
He repeated the language of the court order as if reading it protected him from understanding it.
Adrian recognized his name from one of Eleanor's files beneath the fountain.
The man was not confused.
He was purchased.
Her commander ordered her to surrender her weapon.
Eleanor approached Bella with open arms.
Bella hid behind Adrian.
"You taped me."
"You were confused, darling."
"The camera saw you."
Eleanor bent close enough for only Bella and Adrian to hear.
"The camera no longer exists."
The officers pulled Adrian away.
Bella kicked and screamed while Eleanor lifted her into a waiting car.
As the door closed, Bella pressed one taped wrist mark against the glass.
May you like
With her fingertip, she wrote a single number in the dust.
SIX.
