## CHAPTER 3 — THE SEALED PASSAGE
The security team removed the wall panel.
Behind it were modern wires.
Not seventeen-year-old wiring.
Someone had installed the system recently.
Detective Hale called in a forensic technician while Logan searched the estate’s maintenance records.
No work order mentioned the east wing.
No contractor had been approved.
No alarm-system upgrade had included that hallway.
Yet someone had built a concealed electronic lock inside Logan’s home.
The technician connected a portable device to the panel.
“This is connected to a biometric reader,” he said.
“Whose biometrics?” Hale asked.
“I can’t tell yet.”
Logan looked toward Graham Knox, the Mercer estate’s security director.
Knox had worked for the family for eleven years.
He was a former federal agent and one of the few men Logan had trusted without question.
“Did you know about this?” Logan asked.
Knox shook his head.
“No, sir.”
The technician entered an override command.
A click echoed inside the wall.
Then the brick section shifted inward.
It was not a wall.
It was a reinforced door designed to look like one.
Cold air drifted from the darkness beyond it.
Noah had been right.
The passage behind the false wall led to a narrow staircase.
At the bottom was a corridor illuminated by emergency lights.
The walls were gray.
The floor was spotless.
This was not part of the original mansion.
It looked like a private medical facility.
Logan passed two observation rooms with one-way glass.
One contained a small bed.
The other contained a wooden chair facing a camera.
At the end of the corridor stood a red metal door.
Noah had drawn it perfectly.
Detective Hale stopped Logan before he reached it.
“Let my officers clear the room.”
He wanted to argue.
Instead, he stepped back.
Two officers entered.
Seconds later, one called out.
“You need to see this.”
Inside the room were dozens of video monitors.
Some displayed hallways inside the estate.
Others displayed Noah’s bedroom.
The nursery.
The playroom.
Even areas where Logan had been told there were no cameras.
On a desk sat medical files bearing Noah’s name.
Each one was labeled with a date.
The earliest file had been created three weeks after Claire’s funeral.
Logan opened it.
At the bottom of the page was a signature authorizing behavioral observation.
The signature belonged to Edmund Mercer.
Logan’s father.
Behind him, something struck the floor.
Graham Knox had dropped his radio.
May you like
Then he turned and ran.
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