Chapter 8 - The Voice in Isabella's Study
Roman locked Isabella's study door before Mason finished speaking.
Mara turned pale.
Titan moved in front of me.
The alarm continued in sharp pulses through the hall.
Roman killed the lights.
Darkness swallowed the room.
"Stay away from the windows," he said.
I moved behind the desk with Mara.
Titan stayed between us and the door.
Roman stood to the side of the frame, not directly in front of it.
He had drawn a handgun from beneath his jacket.
I hated how natural it looked in his hand.
"You carry that in your own house?" I whispered.
"Tonight has not improved my trust issues."
A soft thud came from the hallway.
Titan's head snapped toward it.
Roman raised one finger to his lips.
Mara gripped my arm.
Another sound.
Closer.
Then silence.
The alarm stopped.
That was worse.
Roman's phone vibrated.
He checked the message.
MASON: SYSTEM OVERRIDDEN FROM EAST WING.
I looked at the floorboard.
At Isabella's hidden envelope.
At the room that had supposedly remained untouched for five years.
"They came for this," I whispered.
Roman nodded once.
The doorknob turned.
Locked.
It stopped.
Then someone knocked.
Three slow taps.
Titan did not growl.
That caught my attention.
His ears were forward, but his body was not afraid.
Roman noticed too.
"Who is it?"
A man's voice answered.
"Mason."
Roman's weapon did not lower.
"Code."
"Twelve gray harbor."
Roman unlocked the door.
Mason entered alone.
His face was tight.
"We lost cameras for twenty-two seconds."
"Intruder?"
"Possibly two."
"How?"
"Service corridor from the garage."
Roman's eyes hardened.
"Only internal staff know that route."
"I know."
"Anyone missing?"
"One kitchen porter and a night engineer."
"Find them."
Mason looked at the open floorboard.
"What did they want?"
Roman handed him the photograph.
Mason stared at Gabriel.
Then Damian.
"This is real?"
"We don't know."
Mason turned it over.
He read Isabella's sentence.
"Roman is not safe if he learns the truth."
He looked up.
"What truth?"
"That's what we're about to find out."
A radio crackled at Mason's belt.
"Unit two to command."
Mason answered.
"Go."
"Found the porter."
"Where?"
"Laundry room."
"Unconscious but breathing."
"Engineer?"
"Still missing."
Mason swore.
Roman looked at Mara.
"Take Claire to the safe room."
I stepped forward.
"No."
Roman turned slowly.
"This is not your store."
"Exactly."
"Which means I don't know your exits, your staff, your safe room, or who inside this house is trying to break into a dead woman's study."
"So no, I'm not letting someone I met ten minutes ago walk me into a locked room."
Mara looked almost offended.
"I have worked here thirty-two years."
"I believe you."
"But tonight everyone keeps telling me people can be trusted right before we discover they can't."
Mara considered that.
"Fair enough."
Roman looked at her.
"Please don't encourage her."
"She doesn't require encouragement."
Despite everything, I heard Mason choke back a laugh.
Roman put the gun away.
"Fine."
"We stay together."
He looked at me.
"But you do what I say if something happens."
"Depends what you say."
"Claire."
"Roman."
Mara closed her eyes.
"Isabella would have liked you."
The room went quiet.
Roman turned toward the desk.
"Let's hope that doesn't get her killed too."
The words came out harsher than he intended.
He knew it immediately.
I did too.
Mara looked away.
Roman's face tightened.
"I didn't mean that."
"Maybe you did," I said.
"Maybe you're scared."
His eyes flashed.
"I don't get scared."
"That's usually what scared people say."
Mason stepped between the conversation before it could become something else.
"Sir, we need to move."
Roman nodded.
He tucked the envelope and key inside his coat.
I picked up the photograph from the desk.
Then I noticed the old answering machine beside a stack of books.
It was the kind with a physical cassette.
The power light was off.
"Was that here before?"
Mara looked.
"Yes."
"Isabella hated voicemail on her cell."
"She kept that ridiculous thing for years."
I turned it over.
A small battery compartment sat beneath it.
"If the power has been off in this room, why is there a fresh battery inside?"
Roman came closer.
The battery was new enough that the date code was visible.
Installed this year.
Someone had been in the room.
Recently.
Mason took the machine.
"Don't press anything."
"I wasn't going to."
He opened the cassette compartment.
A microcassette sat inside.
White label.
One handwritten word.
ROMAN.
Nobody moved.
Roman took the machine from Mason.
Mara whispered,
"That handwriting isn't Isabella's."
Roman looked at her.
"Whose is it?"
She stared at the label.
Her face drained of color.
"Gabriel's."
Roman's hands tightened around the machine.
"You're sure?"
"I watched that boy write birthday cards for twenty-five years."
"I'm sure."
Mason looked toward the door.
"If Gabriel put this here recently, he may have been the intruder."
Titan suddenly walked to the answering machine.
He sniffed it.
Then his tail moved.
Once.
Twice.
The same way it had when Roman first crouched in my store.
I stared at him.
"He knows the scent."
Roman's face went blank.
"Gabriel?"
I did not answer.
Mason photographed the cassette before Roman touched the controls.
He also photographed the battery compartment, the label, the dust pattern around the machine, and the fresh smear on the desk where someone had set it down.
"You're documenting fingerprints?" I asked.
"Everything."
"Good."
Roman gave me a sideways look.
"Approval at last."
"Don't get used to it."
Mara sat on the edge of Isabella's reading chair.
Her hands were clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone pale.
"If that is Gabriel's writing, whoever put it here knew we would recognize it."
"Unless Gabriel put it here himself," I said.
Mara looked at me.
Hope and fear crossed her face at the same time.
"After six years?"
"We already have a photograph after his funeral."
Roman picked up the cassette.
"If he's alive, why not walk through the front door?"
Mason answered quietly.
"Maybe because whoever made him disappear still watches the front door."
Roman's eyes hardened.
The thought sat heavily in the room.
Titan sniffed the answering machine again.
Then he looked toward Roman.
His tail moved once.
I watched carefully.
"Whatever scent is on that machine isn't frightening him."
"Could be Gabriel?" Roman asked.
"Could be someone he associates with safety."
"Could also be Mara, you, household dust, or the person who carried it."
"Don't make it mean more than we know."
Roman nodded.
That was another change.
Hours earlier he had entered my store expecting a command to solve the problem.
Now he was learning to tolerate uncertainty.
He set the cassette into the machine.
His finger hovered over PLAY.
"Ready?" I asked.
"No."
Then he pressed it anyway.
Roman pressed PLAY.
Static filled the room.
Then a man's voice came through the tiny speaker.
It was rougher than Roman's, but similar enough that the relationship was unmistakable.
"Roman, if you're hearing this, Isabella failed to keep you out of it."
Roman stopped breathing.
The tape continued.
"I am alive."
Mara made a broken sound behind me.
Roman did not move.
"Do not trust Damian."
A pause crackled through the speaker.
"Do not trust Lucian."
Another pause.
"And whatever you do, do not take Titan to the foundation gala."
Before Roman could press stop, another sound surfaced beneath the static.
A faint metallic rhythm.
Three taps.
Pause.
Three taps again.
Gabriel's recorded breathing changed.
"If you found the key," his voice said, "do not scan Titan anywhere connected to the modern Calder network."
Roman looked at Mason.
The tape continued.
"The second identifier was built before Roman took control."
"Matteo knows the old protocol."
"If he sees the token come online, he will know exactly where Titan is."
I felt cold.
Roman looked at me.
"Second identifier."
"The chip," I said.
We had not found it yet, but the word fit too many clues.
Gabriel continued.
"Isabella knew only part of this."
"I kept the rest from her because I thought ignorance would protect her."
His voice cracked slightly.
"I was wrong."
Roman closed his eyes.
The tape hissed.
"If Claire Bennett is with you, listen to her about the dog."
My breath stopped.
Mason looked at me.
Roman's eyes opened.
Gabriel's voice continued.
"She will not understand why her name is in this yet."
"That is safer for her."
"Do not make the mistake our family always makes."
"Do not confuse keeping information from someone with protecting them."
Roman looked almost offended by the accuracy of the dead man's criticism.
I stared at the answering machine.
"He knew I might be here."
"He knew Isabella left your name somewhere," Roman said.
"Maybe not where."
Mason's expression hardened.
"This tape is not old."
"Why?"
He pointed to the background.
"That harbor horn."
Roman listened.
A faint two-tone fog signal sounded beneath Gabriel's voice.
Mason pulled out his phone.
"Boston Harbor changed the temporary fog pattern during seawall work last month."
"That exact sequence didn't exist before then."
The room went silent.
The cassette was recent.
Gabriel had not simply survived years ago.
He had been alive in Boston within the last month.
Roman stared at the speaker as if it might turn into a door.
Then Gabriel's voice returned, lower this time.
The tape clicked.
For two seconds there was only static.
Then Gabriel's voice returned, lower this time.
May you like
"Because the person who trained him to kill you is already inside your house."
