Chapter 3 - The Darkness Behind the Music
The ballroom screamed when the chandeliers died.
Not one scream.
Hundreds.
Crystal shattered.
Chairs scraped across marble.
The string orchestra stopped in the middle of a note.
Someone knocked over the champagne tower, and the collapse rolled through the darkness like breaking ice.
I caught Julian by the shoulder.
“Natalie,” I said.
“I’m here.”
Her voice came from my left.
“Both of you stay against the wall.”
I reached beneath the hem of my dress and removed the compact flashlight strapped above my ankle.
Julian stared when the narrow beam appeared.
“You came armed with a flashlight?”
“I came to a Voss wedding.”
Emergency lights flickered red along the corridor floor.
They were weak, but they gave us enough visibility to move.
I took the flash drive from Julian and slipped it beneath my bracelet.
The bracelet was not decorative.
Its interior compartment had once held emergency authentication codes during a classified deployment.
Tonight, it held something more dangerous.
“Who knows about the drive?” I asked.
“Me, Natalie, and the federal investigator we contacted.”
“Name.”
“Claire Reyes.”
“Agency?”
“Naval Criminal Investigative Service.”
Natalie shook her head.
“Claire attended tonight under cover as part of the hotel service staff.”
The ballroom doors burst open.
Guests poured into the corridor.
Some used their phones for light.
Others shouted names.
A woman was crying because she could not find her child.
A server had fallen near the doorway, and two guests were trying to lift him.
Chaos was exactly what whoever sent the threat had wanted.
“Stay with Natalie,” I told Julian.
“I’m not leaving either of you,” he said.
“That was not a request.”
His jaw tightened.
He was Damian’s son, but in that moment, he reminded me of myself at nineteen.
Stubborn.
Afraid.
Unwilling to show either.
The hotel’s backup generator started.
Lights blinked once.
Then twice.
The corridor brightened.
Natalie was beside me.
Julian was gone.
For half a second, my mind refused to accept it.
He had been touching my arm.
He had been standing less than three feet away.
Now there was only an empty space between two panicked guests.
“Julian!” Natalie shouted.
No answer.
We pushed against the crowd.
I saw Damian near the ballroom entrance.
He was holding his phone and barking orders at hotel security.
Conrad stood behind him.
Bennett Vale was nowhere in sight.
I grabbed the nearest security officer.
“Lock every exterior door.”
He blinked at me.
“Ma’am, we have procedures.”
“Then follow them before the person who caused this reaches the street.”
The officer hesitated until Natalie stepped forward.
“Do it,” she said.
“Right now.”
Recognition crossed his face.
He had seen the salute.
He reached for his radio.
“Seal the hotel.”
The ballroom lights returned at full strength.
The scene looked worse in brightness.
Broken glass covered the dance floor.
The floral arch had tilted.
Guests stood in clusters, frightened and angry.
Conrad found me near the service entrance.
“What have you done?” he demanded.
I looked at him.
“You think I cut the power at my nephew’s wedding?”
“You arrived after twenty-one years, turned the ceremony into a military spectacle, and now the hotel is locked down.”
“Julian is missing.”
The anger disappeared from his face.
“What?”
“Someone took him during the blackout.”
Damian stopped beside us.
“That is impossible.”
“He was standing beside me.”
Damian looked toward Natalie.
“Where is my son?”
“If we knew, we wouldn’t be searching,” she said.
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
“This happened because of you.”
He pointed at me.
“You brought your enemies into this family.”
“No,” Natalie answered.
“This happened because Julian discovered yours.”
Conrad’s face tightened.
“What did he discover?”
Natalie looked at me.
I gave the smallest shake of my head.
Until we knew who was compromised, we told no one more than necessary.
Hotel security divided the ballroom into sections.
No one was allowed to leave.
Guests protested.
Several threatened lawsuits.
One claimed to know the governor.
Another insisted his blood sugar required immediate transportation.
The security team opened a monitored medical room but kept every exit sealed.
I moved into the service corridor with Natalie.
Two officers followed us.
The kitchen was crowded with frightened staff.
Steam still rose from abandoned pans.
A pot of sauce had burned black on the stove.
Near the loading entrance, one camera hung crooked from the ceiling.
Its cable had been cut cleanly.
“This was planned,” Natalie said.
“Yes.”
We found Julian’s boutonniere near the freight elevator.
The white rose had been crushed beneath a shoe.
Beside it lay a gold cuff link engraved with a letter V.
Natalie picked it up with a napkin.
“Voss.”
“Or Vale.”
The freight elevator stood open.
A faint chemical odor remained inside.
Natalie covered her mouth.
“Sedative?”
“Possibly.”
A security officer checked the control panel.
“This elevator was taken to the basement during the blackout.”
“Can the loading garage be accessed from there?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why was it not locked?”
The officer’s face changed.
“It should have been.”
We descended by stairwell.
The basement smelled of concrete, oil, and wet pavement.
Rows of black vehicles filled the underground garage.
Security barriers had lowered over both ramps.
No cars could leave now.
But one of the loading doors at the rear stood open.
Rain blew inside.
A black sedan idled beyond it.
Its driver’s door was open.
We approached carefully.
The vehicle was empty.
Julian’s phone rested on the passenger seat.
A fresh message glowed across the screen.
Midnight.
Pier 9.
Bring Admiral Voss alone.
Natalie read it over my shoulder.
“They want you.”
“They want the flash drive.”
“Julian could already be dead.”
“He isn’t.”
“How can you know?”
“Because a hostage has value only while the person holding him needs something.”
The loading door began lowering automatically.
I caught movement in the reflection of the sedan window.
A man stepped from behind a concrete pillar.
His face was hidden beneath a hotel security cap.
He raised something in his hand.
I shoved Natalie aside.
A compressed hiss cut through the garage.
A dart struck the sedan where her neck had been.
The attacker ran.
I followed.
My old heels lasted six steps before one broke.
I kicked them off and continued barefoot across the concrete.
The man reached the stairwell.
He slammed the fire door behind him.
I hit it with my shoulder and emerged into a passage leading toward the hotel laundry rooms.
White sheets hung from rolling racks.
Industrial machines thundered.
The attacker disappeared between them.
I slowed.
Running blindly was how people entered traps.
A shadow moved behind a rack.
I grabbed a metal laundry pole and swept it low.
The man stumbled.
He recovered quickly and swung at me.
I blocked his forearm and drove the pole into his stomach.
He folded, but before I could remove the mask, the lights went out again.
Only in the laundry room.
By the time emergency illumination returned, the man was gone.
A maintenance door stood open at the far wall.
Natalie reached me with two security officers.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
I looked down.
Something had fallen from the attacker’s jacket.
A small black card lay near the sheets.
On one side was the gold crest of the Voss family.
On the other was a handwritten message.
Ask Conrad what happened at Pier 9 twenty-one years ago.
May you like
My father had told me I did not belong at the wedding.
But someone had been waiting twenty-one years for me to return.
