Chapter 5 - The Person Inside My House
The drive back to Greenwich took ninety minutes.
I remember almost none of it.
I called my security chief, Nathan Cole, from the car.
“Lock the property.”
“We already have.”
“Nobody leaves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pull every camera.”
“Doing it.”
“Police?”
My mother looked at me sharply.
I hesitated.
Claire's message echoed in my head.
Do not trust the police report.
“Not yet.”
Nathan paused.
“Sir?”
“Do not call anyone until I arrive.”
Marcus drove.
I sat beside him watching security feeds on my phone.
At 12:07, Lily entered her bedroom.
At 12:11, the camera outside her hallway froze.
Not black.
Frozen.
At 12:16, it resumed.
No one appeared.
The window sensor showed an opening at 12:14.
Someone had known exactly where our cameras were.
Exactly how to interrupt them.
Exactly how to reach my daughter's room.
Then Anna called again.
“Mr. Mercer, I found her.”
I nearly dropped the phone.
“Where?”
“Your old playroom.”
“What?”
“She was hiding.”
“Put her on.”
A small voice.
“Dad?”
I closed my eyes.
“Lily.”
“I'm sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did someone come into your room?”
Silence.
“Lily?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A man.”
My mother gripped my arm.
“Did you know him?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me Grandma sent him.”
My mother whispered, “No.”
“Then what?”
“He said we were going to see Mr. Gray.”
“How did you get away?”
“I told him my shoes were downstairs.”
Smart girl.
“And?”
“When he looked in the closet, I ran through the bathroom.”
Her room connected to an old dressing room and a secondary corridor.
I had forgotten.
Lily hadn't.
“I hid.”
“You did exactly right.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“He knew my name.”
“I know.”
“And he knew Mommy's.”
The line went quiet.
“Lily?”
“He said Mommy was waiting for me.”
My mother started crying.
We arrived twenty-three minutes later.
I ran upstairs.
Lily came toward me.
I dropped to my knees and held her.
For several seconds, nothing else existed.
Then I saw Nathan standing in the doorway.
He was pale.
“We need to talk.”
I took Lily downstairs to Anna.
My mother stayed with her.
Marcus and I followed Nathan into the security room.
“Show me.”
Nathan replayed the camera interruption.
“External hack?”
“No.”
“What?”
“The cameras were disabled locally.”
“From where?”
“This room.”
I stared at him.
“Who accessed it?”
Nathan hesitated.
“Only four people have credentials.”
“Names.”
“You. Me. Owen Price. Michael Trent.”
Owen and Michael were the two guards pictured behind us at breakfast.
Both had worked for me for years.
“Where are they?”
“Owen's downstairs.”
“Michael?”
Nathan's jaw tightened.
“Gone.”
“When?”
“His car left twelve minutes before we realized Lily was missing.”
“Find him.”
“We are.”
Marcus checked another terminal.
“Michael Trent worked for you four years ago?”
Nathan nodded.
“Joined five years ago.”
My skin went cold.
Claire's message.
The person handling Daniel's security.
“Who hired him?”
Nathan looked embarrassed.
“I inherited him from the previous chief.”
“Who was?”
“Robert Kane.”
I knew the name.
Robert had managed security for my father.
He retired shortly after Claire died.
“Where is Kane?”
“Florida, last I knew.”
Marcus was already searching.
Then he stopped.
“No.”
“What?”
“Robert Kane died eighteen months ago.”
Another dead end.
Or someone wanted it to be.
We searched Michael's locker.
Empty except for a jacket.
His employee file showed an address in White Plains.
We sent a team.
Vacant apartment.
Marcus dug deeper.
Michael Trent was not his birth name.
Fingerprint records from a prior federal contractor database identified him as Michael Voss.
And Michael Voss had once worked for Vale Medical Technologies.
Claire's father's company.
The connection wasn't inside my world.
It had come from hers.
By evening, we knew more.
Voss had been employed as a security consultant during the Vale company's sale.
Afterward, he worked privately for someone connected to the family trust.
Who?
The records were missing.
At 7:20, Lily asked to speak to me alone.
We sat in the library.
She held the blue bracelet.
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“The man today.”
“Yes?”
“I saw him before.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where?”
“At the secret place?”
She shook her head.
“Here.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long?”
“When I was little.”
She was seven.
Four years ago, she had been three.
“Do you remember why he was here?”
“He was talking to Mommy.”
“Where?”
“By the stairs.”
“What were they doing?”
“Mommy was mad.”
“What did she say?”
Lily frowned, trying to reach a memory buried under years.
“She said, ‘You don't work for us anymore.’”
I closed my eyes.
Claire knew Michael Voss.
And she had tried to remove him.
Yet he remained in my security organization for four more years.
Someone had overridden her.
I checked personnel archives.
Michael's termination order existed.
Signed by Claire.
Then rescinded two days later.
Authorized by—
My mother.
I stared at the screen.
I found her in the dining room.
“Why did you keep Michael?”
She read the document.
Confusion crossed her face.
“I didn't.”
“Your authorization.”
“I never signed this.”
“Digital credentials.”
“Daniel, I didn't do it.”
“Who had access?”
“My assistant at the foundation.”
“Who?”
She hesitated.
“Thomas.”
The room went silent.
Thomas Bell.
Again.
I called Marcus.
“Find Thomas now.”
Before he could answer, another call arrived.
Unknown number.
I picked up.
“Daniel.”
Thomas.
“Where is Lily?”
“With me.”
“Good.”
“Where are you?”
“I can't tell you.”
“Where's Adrian?”
“Safe.”
“You transferred him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Voss found Willowbrook.”
“Thomas, stop giving me fragments.”
Silence.
Then:
“Your wife survived because Adrian pulled her from the car.”
I gripped the phone.
“Where is Claire?”
“I don't know.”
“You were photographed with her three months after the crash.”
“I was.”
“So tell me.”
“She disappeared again.”
“Why?”
“Because she discovered who had been controlling Rebecca.”
“Who?”
Thomas breathed out.
“Your father.”
My father had been dead five years before Claire's crash.
“That’s impossible.”
“Richard Mercer created the structure before he died. Somebody else continued it.”
“Who?”
“I thought it was Evelyn.”
I looked at my mother.
She heard.
Her face went white.
“I was wrong,” Thomas continued. “Claire proved it.”
“Who was it?”
A sound interrupted him.
A door slamming.
Thomas whispered something.
Then the line crackled.
“Thomas?”
No answer.
“Thomas!”
His voice returned.
Urgent now.
“Daniel, listen. There is a second copy of Claire's recording.”
“Where?”
“Your father’s old office.”
“I searched it.”
“Not the library. His office in Manhattan.”
The Mercer building.
“What am I looking for?”
“Desk. Bottom drawer. False back.”
Then I heard another voice through Thomas's phone.
Michael Voss.
“Put it down.”
Thomas whispered one final sentence.
“He knows you're coming.”
A crash.
The call ended.
I looked at Marcus.
We left immediately.
Forty minutes later, the elevator opened onto my father's preserved executive floor.
Dark.
Silent.
Nobody was supposed to be there.
But light showed beneath the office door.
I approached.
The door was unlocked.
My father's desk stood exactly where I remembered it.
Bottom drawer.
False back.
My fingers found the panel.
It opened.
Inside was a flash drive.
And beneath it lay a photograph of Claire taken recently.
Not four years ago.
Recently.
She was older.
Alive.
On the back was today's date.
Then a voice came from the darkness behind me.
“You finally found her.”
I turned.
A woman stepped into the light.
She had Claire's eyes.
But she wasn't Claire.
She looked at me and said:
May you like
“My name is Rebecca Vale.”
Then she locked the office door behind her.
