CHAPTER 8: THE EMPTY BOX
Three months after Margaret Crane’s arrest, Lily Whitmore finally began sleeping through the night.
She still kept the lamp beside her bed on.
She still checked the hallway twice before closing her eyes.
And she still woke whenever the old mansion became too quiet.
But the nightmares were becoming less frequent.
Daniel and Elena considered that progress.
The criminal case against Margaret moved slowly. Her attorneys claimed that she had been misunderstood, that Daniel’s violent entrance had frightened her, and that the numbered notebook documented ordinary disciplinary incidents rather than physical punishments.
The security footage told a different story.
So did the photographs taken at the hospital.
Yet Margaret refused every plea agreement.
“She thinks someone is going to protect her,” Marcus Hale told Daniel one evening.
They stood inside Daniel’s private study while rain tapped against the windows.
“Who?” Daniel asked.
“We’re still checking.”
Marcus placed several documents on the desk.
Margaret’s bank records showed regular deposits over the previous eleven years. None were large enough to trigger suspicion, but together they totaled more than four hundred thousand dollars.
Every payment had come through shell companies.
Daniel stared at the records.
“She wasn’t only stealing jewelry.”
“No.”
“Someone was paying her.”
Marcus nodded.
“For a very long time.”
Before Daniel could respond, a scream echoed from the second floor.
“Daddy!”
Daniel was out of the study before Marcus reached the door.
He ran upstairs and found Lily standing in the library entrance, clutching her stuffed rabbit.
Elena rushed from their bedroom.
“What happened?”
Lily pointed toward the rabbit.
“There’s something inside him.”
A section of stitching beneath the rabbit’s left arm had come loose. A small piece of folded paper protruded from the opening.
Daniel carefully removed it.
The message contained only one sentence.
THE FINAL BOX IS STILL EMPTY.
Elena’s face went pale.
Daniel immediately looked around the library.
“Marcus!”
The security chief entered seconds later. He read the message and ordered the mansion locked down.
Every staff member was accounted for.
No doors had been opened.
No windows had been broken.
The exterior cameras showed no one approaching the property.
Marcus took the rabbit and examined the torn seam.
“This stitching is fresh.”
“Margaret threw that rabbit across the room,” Daniel said. “She could have put the message inside it before we arrived.”
Marcus shook his head.
“The thread is less than twenty-four hours old.”
Someone had entered Lily’s bedroom after the rabbit was returned to her.
Someone had stood beside her bed while she slept.
Daniel gathered Lily into his arms.
“Take her downstairs,” Marcus told Elena. “Stay with the officers.”
“What officers?”
“The ones I’m calling now.”
As Elena carried Lily away, Marcus removed a scanner from his equipment bag and slowly moved it along the library walls.
The device remained silent until he reached the shelves beside the fireplace.
Then it began to beep.
Marcus pulled several books away and pressed against the wooden panel.
A narrow section of the wall shifted inward.
Cold air moved through the opening.
Behind the shelves was a dark passageway.
Daniel stared into it.
The mansion had been built more than a century earlier. He knew about the old servants’ corridors beneath the kitchen, but no one had ever told him there were passages inside the upstairs walls.
Marcus shone his flashlight into the darkness.
Dust covered the floor.
In the center of it was a single fresh footprint.
Daniel’s voice lowered.
“Someone is still inside the house.”
A soft sound came from the passage.
Not footsteps.
Breathing.
Marcus drew his weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
They entered together.
The passage was barely wide enough for one person. Pipes ran along the ceiling, and faded wallpaper clung to the opposite wall.
Twenty feet ahead, the tunnel divided.
Marcus stopped.
Something metallic rolled from the darkness and struck his shoe.
It was one of Lily’s silver hair clips.
Then a man’s voice whispered from behind the wall.
“You should have stayed in Paris.”
May you like
The lights in the mansion went out.
And somewhere below them, Lily screamed again.
