Chapter 2 - Two Red Lights Behind the Wall
I had learned years ago that panic was contagious.
So was confidence.
That was why, when Sophie told me she had heard the same sound inside my office, I did not run upstairs.
I wanted to.
Instead, I stood.
“Marco.”
He understood.
“Teams Alpha and Bravo with me.”
“No radios.”
His expression sharpened.
“You think they're compromised?”
“I think someone put Moretti security equipment inside my children's wall. Until we know how, assume everything is compromised.”
He nodded.
I turned to Dr. Gable.
“Take the babies to the west guest suite.”
“It hasn't been prepared for infants.”
“Prepare it.”
“I'll stay with them.”
“Thank you.”
Elena stepped closer to Sophie.
“We should leave.”
“No.”
She looked at me with immediate fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear for her daughter.
“Mr. Moretti—”
“Sophie saw something yesterday that might matter. Nobody leaves until we know whether the danger is outside or inside.”
Elena pulled Sophie closer.
I softened my voice.
“You'll both stay with the babies. Four security officers. Dr. Gable. Nobody enters without Marco or me.”
That reassured her slightly.
Sophie, however, remained focused on the device.
“Can you turn it off?”
Marco had placed it inside a shielded evidence bag.
“We think it is off now,” I told her.
She shook her head.
“The other one.”
I stared at her.
“What other one?”
Sophie lifted one small shoulder.
“The one upstairs.”
Marco and I exchanged a look.
Five minutes later, we were climbing the main staircase.
Nobody spoke.
My home had never felt unfamiliar to me.
That night it did.
Every corner became a possibility.
Every employee became a question.
Every camera became an eye I didn't trust.
My office occupied the east side of the second floor.
Only seven people had permanent access.
Me.
Marco.
My attorney.
My chief financial officer.
My executive assistant.
The estate manager.
And Elena for cleaning.
Temporary access could be granted, but every entry should have been recorded.
Marco stopped outside.
“Yesterday, Sophie was in here?”
“Elena?”
Elena had followed only far enough to answer.
“I cleaned the office around four. Sophie sat by the door drawing.”
“You're certain she never entered alone?”
“She came in when I was dusting. Maybe five minutes.”
“What was happening?”
Elena thought.
“Mr. Dario was leaving when we arrived.”
I looked at her.
“Dario?”
My cousin, Dario Moretti.
Chief financial officer of three companies.
A man who had sat beside me at Isabella's funeral.
A man who held Theo in the hospital the first time I was too exhausted to stand.
“He had a meeting with you,” Elena continued.
“He did.”
The memory returned.
Dario had brought quarterly numbers.
Nothing unusual.
At least I hadn't thought so then.
Marco unlocked the office manually.
We entered.
No lights.
He used a flashlight instead.
Sophie's words echoed in my mind.
The one upstairs.
“Where was she?”
Elena pointed.
“Near the desk.”
We searched for forty-three minutes.
Nothing.
Marco checked vents.
Outlets.
Paintings.
Desk drawers.
Light fixtures.
Bookshelves.
Nothing.
Then Elena said, “Wait.”
She crossed toward the sitting area.
“Sophie dropped crayons here.”
She pointed beside a leather chair near the fireplace.
Marco crouched.
There was a brass floor register partly hidden beneath the chair.
He removed it.
Nothing inside.
Then he swept his light along the duct.
A faint reflection appeared.
Marco reached farther.
When he pulled his arm back, he was holding another black module.
Same dimensions.
Same lens.
Same directional speaker.
Same scratched serial number.
And two tiny red LEDs.
Nobody spoke.
Marco looked toward me.
I felt strangely calm.
That's the dangerous thing about real anger.
It isn't always loud.
Sometimes it clears the room inside your head.
“Take it downstairs.”
We converted the library into a temporary command center.
Marco disconnected the house from the external network.
Every employee was accounted for.
Phones went into numbered lockboxes.
Nobody protested.
Not after seeing my expression.
Dr. Morris examined the nursery device with one of Marco's technical specialists, a former federal communications engineer named Ethan Park.
Ethan spent ten minutes looking at it before saying anything.
Finally, he removed his glasses.
“This is custom.”
“What does it do?”
“The camera is obvious.”
“And the speaker?”
“Not exactly a speaker.”
He connected diagnostic equipment.
After another fifteen minutes he looked uncomfortable.
“It produces high-frequency sound.”
“How high?”
“Mostly beyond normal adult hearing.”
Sophie had been brought downstairs briefly at my request.
Ethan looked at her.
“Children can sometimes perceive higher frequencies than adults, especially very young children. Infants can be extremely sensitive.”
Dr. Gable folded his arms.
“Enough to cause screaming?”
“If it's loud enough and unpleasant enough? Possibly. It could create distress without causing obvious external symptoms.”
My jaw tightened.
“So someone deliberately frightened my children.”
Ethan hesitated.
“That appears to be what this device was designed to do.”
The room became colder.
Marco asked, “Purpose?”
“Could be behavioral manipulation. Drive someone away from a location. Force routines to change. Make a room unusable.”
“Or force me to move the babies,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
That possibility changed everything.
If the device wasn't meant primarily to hurt them, it might have been designed to make us relocate them.
To somewhere less secure.
“Where were they supposed to go if the nursery became unusable?” Marco asked.
“The west suite,” I said.
His expression changed.
Exactly where we'd just taken them.
I was moving before anyone else reacted.
“Get them out.”
Marco shouted into the internal line.
“No radios,” I reminded him.
He grabbed the hardwired emergency phone.
“West wing. Move the children now. Ballroom safe room. Immediately.”
For the next ninety seconds, I knew nothing.
It was the longest minute and a half of my life.
Then a guard appeared in the doorway.
“Secure.”
I exhaled.
“Anything in the west suite?”
“We haven't entered yet.”
“Seal it.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“If the plan was to force relocation, there may be another device.”
Marco looked at me.
“Or something worse.”
We searched the west guest suite remotely first.
A bomb technician from my security firm arrived.
No explosives.
But beneath the guest bed, they found something.
Not a weapon.
A cellular transmitter.
It had been taped beneath the frame.
It activated when someone entered the room.
Someone had expected us to move the triplets there.
Someone knew my household procedures.
I turned toward the staff gathered in the adjacent dining room.
Nearly thirty people.
Nannies.
Cleaners.
Cooks.
Drivers.
Security.
Estate staff.
Most had worked for me for years.
One of them had betrayed me.
Maybe more than one.
Marco approached.
“We checked the access records.”
“And?”
“The nursery vent was serviced nine days ago.”
“By whom?”
“According to the log, nobody.”
I looked at him.
“That makes no sense.”
“The physical maintenance sensor shows the vent cover was removed. But the access system shows no technician entered.”
“Then someone deleted the record.”
“Yes.”
“Who can delete access records?”
Marco didn't answer immediately.
That told me I wasn't going to like the answer.
“How many?”
“Four people.”
“Names.”
“You. Me. Estate manager Harold Pierce.”
“And?”
Marco's eyes met mine.
“Dario.”
For several seconds, I heard only the ticking of the library clock.
My cousin.
My blood.
But suspicion wasn't proof.
In my world, acting on suspicion had destroyed more families than betrayal itself.
“Find evidence.”
Marco nodded.
I looked toward Sophie.
She sat beside Elena on a sofa, swinging her shoes a few inches above the floor.
Her strange doll rested in her lap.
“Yesterday,” I said gently, “when you heard the sound in my office, did you see anybody?”
Sophie thought carefully.
“A man.”
Elena looked at her.
“What man?”
“The fixing man.”
Marco crouched.
“What did he look like?”
Sophie frowned.
“He had a gray shirt.”
“Hair?”
“A hat.”
“Did he talk to you?”
She nodded.
“What did he say?”
Sophie looked down.
“He said the noise was the house breathing.”
My skin prickled.
“Anything else?”
“He told me little girls shouldn't listen to walls.”
Elena's face drained of color.
Marco stood.
“Boss.”
I already knew.
“Find him.”
“We need more than a description.”
Sophie suddenly held up her doll.
“He touched Poppy.”
“Your doll?”
She nodded.
“He said she was ugly.”
For some reason, that offended me almost as much as everything else.
“What did you do?”
“I told him Poppy hears secrets.”
Marco almost smiled.
Almost.
But Sophie wasn't finished.
“And then he got scared.”
That wiped away any hint of amusement.
“Why?”
She turned the doll around.
There was a tiny plastic button sewn into its back.
“My mommy put this in so she can find me if I get lost.”
Elena blinked.
Then covered her mouth.
“A tracker.”
Marco looked at me.
Not just a tracker.
Modern children's trackers kept location histories.
If Sophie had been near the mysterious technician yesterday, we might know exactly where he'd gone after leaving my office.
Ethan connected Elena's phone to an isolated computer.
The location history appeared.
At 4:12 p.m., Sophie was inside my office.
At 4:19, she moved into the east hallway.
At 4:23, near the service elevator.
Then something strange happened.
For seven minutes, her tracker showed movement through a corridor Sophie had never entered.
Elena stared.
“She wasn't there.”
“What?”
“She stayed with me.”
Marco leaned toward the screen.
“Then someone else carried the tracker.”
We looked at Sophie's doll.
The man had touched it.
Maybe briefly taken it.
Maybe the tracker signal had reflected strangely.
Or maybe—
Sophie whispered, “He took Poppy.”
“When?”
“When Mommy was cleaning.”
“For how long?”
“He said he had to fix her eye.”
The adults exchanged looks.
The tracker data continued.
Service elevator.
Basement.
Loading entrance.
Then parking garage.
At 4:29, the signal stopped near an address six blocks from my estate.
Ethan zoomed in.
An old commercial property.
Marco recognized it first.
“Moretti Estate Systems storage annex.”
The company whose initials had been scratched into the devices.
Someone had taken Sophie's doll there.
Someone who believed a four-year-old would never matter.
I stood.
“Prepare the cars.”
Marco nodded.
Sophie looked up at me.
“Are the babies okay?”
I stopped.
All the power, all the money, all the secrets—and the person who had done more to help my children than anyone else in the house was a little girl in a yellow dress.
I crouched beside her.
“They're safe because of you.”
She smiled faintly.
Then her face became serious.
“The fixing man said he'd come back.”
My smile disappeared.
“When?”
Sophie looked toward the dark windows.
“Tonight.”
And somewhere outside my estate, a man who thought he had erased every trace of himself was about to discover the one mistake he had made.
May you like
He had underestimated a four-year-old girl.
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