Chapter 9 - Christmas Eve Under the Snow
The evacuation took ninety seconds.
It felt like an hour.
Jonathan carried Sophie.
Emily held Mason’s hand.
Police pushed everyone through the front doors as alarms screamed through Hawthorne House.
Snow hit their faces.
Behind them, Christmas lights still glowed along the roof.
Detective Cole shouted into her radio.
The gas leak was confined to the north foundation.
Not enough to destroy the mansion.
Enough to force everyone out.
A distraction.
Mason realized it first.
“The index.”
Cole checked her coat.
The memory card was gone.
Vanessa stood ten feet away.
Everyone looked at her.
She laughed in disbelief.
“You think I took it?”
Emily searched the snow.
A uniformed officer was missing.
Cole grabbed her radio.
“Officer Daniels?”
No response.
Then Mason saw a figure running toward the greenhouse.
“There!”
Police followed.
Jonathan stayed with the children.
For once, he did not chase the mystery.
He chose them.
Emily noticed.
“Go,” she said.
“No.”
“Cole needs help.”
“She has trained officers.”
Jonathan wrapped his coat around Sophie.
“I’m staying.”
Mason looked at him.
Something in his expression softened.
Police captured Officer Daniels at the tunnel entrance.
He had the memory card.
And a second phone.
Charles had paid him.
The corruption reached inside the investigation.
Detective Cole returned furious.
“He’s been feeding Charles information for months.”
Emily stared toward Hawthorne House.
“That’s how he always knew.”
Cole nodded.
“We change everything now. No shared channels. No predictable transport.”
Vanessa spoke.
“I can bring Charles out.”
Jonathan turned.
“No.”
“He trusts greed.”
“He knows you cooperated.”
“He thinks I always choose myself.”
Mason muttered, “He’s not completely wrong.”
Vanessa accepted the insult.
“No. He isn’t.”
Her plan was simple.
Tell Charles she stole the index.
Offer to trade it for money and safe passage.
Cole hated using a civilian suspect.
Vanessa insisted.
“I helped build this nightmare.”
Emily replied, “That does not make you a hero.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
At 11:42 p.m., Vanessa entered the greenhouse alone wearing a wire.
Charles emerged from the tunnel.
Mason watched from a police van monitor.
He had seen his grandfather at Thanksgiving dinners, birthday parties, school concerts.
The man on the screen looked older.
But alive.
Charles smiled at Vanessa.
“Where is it?”
“Money first.”
“You never changed.”
“Neither did you.”
Charles handed her a phone.
“Transfer confirmation.”
Vanessa looked.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Safe.”
“You said that before.”
Charles’s expression chilled.
“You are becoming sentimental.”
“No. Just tired.”
“Of what?”
“Hurting children for old men.”
Charles stepped closer.
“You enjoyed power when it belonged to you.”
Vanessa’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Mason leaned toward the monitor.
She was not pretending.
Charles said, “Give me the index.”
Vanessa reached into her coat.
Police prepared to move.
Then Sophie whispered from behind Mason.
“That’s not Grandpa.”
Mason turned.
“What?”
Sophie pointed at the screen.
“Grandpa has a hurt finger.”
Jonathan frowned.
Charles had lost the tip of his left ring finger in a workshop accident decades earlier.
The man on screen had all ten fingers.
Detective Cole heard it.
“Hold.”
Too late.
Vanessa handed the fake card to the man.
He smiled.
Then police flooded the greenhouse.
The man surrendered.
Not Charles.
Raymond Bell.
The missing investigator.
Alive.
Jonathan stared.
“Where is my father?”
Raymond laughed.
“Watching.”
Cole grabbed him.
“From where?”
Raymond looked toward the mansion.
“Where he has watched every Christmas.”
Mason understood before the adults did.
“The angel.”
The enormous decorative angel above the ballroom doors had been part of Hawthorne House since Charles renovated it.
Police searched behind it.
A concealed camera.
A microphone.
And a small transmitter.
The signal led not outside the estate.
It led upstairs.
To Charles Reed’s old bedroom.
Jonathan ran with police.
The room was empty.
But the fireplace stood open.
Behind it was another passage.
On the floor lay a fresh footprint.
Beside it was a wrapped Christmas present addressed to Mason.
Jonathan shouted, “Don’t touch it!”
Bomb technicians examined the package.
No explosive.
Inside was a photograph.
Charles standing beside Emily years earlier.
On the back:
MIDNIGHT. FAMILY CHAPEL. COME ALONE OR THE REST OF THE ARCHIVE GOES PUBLIC.
Jonathan checked the clock.
11:57.
Mason looked at him.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I have to.”
“No.”
“Mason.”
“You said you were done leaving us.”
Jonathan looked at his son.
Three minutes until Christmas.
He tore the note in half.
May you like
“You’re right.”
Then the chapel bell began ringing by itself.
