Chapter 4 - The Maid Who Wasn’t a Maid
Arthur fired toward the laugh.
Silence followed.
Emergency lights glowed red.
Clara grabbed Nora.
“Stay behind me.”
Arthur looked at her.
“You’re unarmed.”
“I still have the razor.”
For the first time in ninety-four nights, Arthur Kingsley genuinely smiled.
They searched the bedroom.
Empty.
Then Clara noticed movement beneath the bed.
Arthur crouched.
A phone.
The laughter had been a recording.
On its screen was a countdown.
04:12.
“What happens at zero?” Clara asked.
“I’d prefer not to discover it.”
Nora examined the phone.
“Remote trigger.”
“For what?”
She pointed toward the building schematic displayed beneath the timer.
Arthur understood.
“Fire suppression.”
Clara frowned.
“That sounds good.”
“Not when the suppression system has been filled with gas.”
They had four minutes.
Arthur called security and ordered an evacuation.
Then Clara remembered Daniel.
Floor seventeen.
“I’m going down.”
“No.”
“He’s my brother.”
“And you dying helps him how?”
She stepped close.
“You don’t get to order me around.”
“I literally employ you.”
“Temporary housekeeping contract. Read the fine print.”
Another faint smile.
Three minutes.
They moved.
The stairwell was chaos.
Arthur’s men evacuated residents and staff.
Clara reached seventeen.
Apartment 1706 stood open.
Dominic lay bleeding near the entrance.
Daniel was gone.
Ryan was gone.
Arthur checked Dominic’s wound.
Alive.
Barely.
Dominic grabbed Arthur’s vest.
“Basement.”
“What?”
“He took Daniel downstairs.”
Clara ran.
Arthur followed.
They reached the basement with ninety seconds remaining.
Ryan had left another phone beside the gas controls.
Daniel’s blood marked the floor.
But no Daniel.
Clara studied the mechanism.
Her brother had taught her something years ago: when frightened, stop looking at the whole problem.
Find the smallest thing that doesn’t belong.
She saw it.
A wire attached to nothing.
Decoy.
She pulled it.
The countdown stopped at twelve seconds.
Arthur stared.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t.”
“That is deeply disturbing.”
Clara laughed despite everything.
Then Arthur collapsed.
Ninety-four nights finally collected their debt.
She caught him before his head struck concrete.
For the next hour, while the building was secured and Dominic received emergency treatment, Arthur slept.
On Clara.
His head rested against her lap in a basement office because she refused to let anyone move him until she knew who could be trusted.
When Arthur woke, he looked confused.
Then embarrassed.
“How long?”
“Fifty-eight minutes.”
“I slept?”
“Like the dead.”
“Poor choice of phrase.”
Clara smiled.
The moment was strangely gentle.
Then Dominic arrived, stitched and furious.
He told them Ryan Mercer had approached him months earlier.
Ryan claimed to have information about Daniel.
Dominic investigated secretly because he suspected someone within Arthur’s security team.
Ryan had been working for a hidden figure known only as the Broker.
Daniel had discovered the Broker controlled the trafficking network.
“What does Ryan want?” Clara asked.
“You,” Dominic said.
“Why?”
“Because Evelyn left something in your name.”
Clara shook her head.
“I have nothing.”
Dominic looked toward her neck.
Her necklace.
A cheap silver pendant she had worn since childhood.
Clara touched it.
Her mother had given it to her.
Arthur examined the clasp.
Inside was a microscopic engraving.
K-6.
Six.
Again.
Arthur opened the pendant.
A tiny strip of paper had been folded inside.
A bank number.
Nora recognized it.
Private vault.
The sixth custodian wasn’t a person.
It was Clara.
Arthur immediately arranged transport to the bank.
But when they reached the private vault, the box had already been opened.
Inside was only a photograph.
Evelyn.
Daniel.
And Ryan.
Taken two years earlier.
Clara stared at it.
“My brother knew Ryan?”
Arthur turned the photograph over.
Daniel had written something.
Clara, if Ryan ever comes back, remember what I told you the night before your wedding.
Clara remembered.
Daniel had hated Ryan.
The night before her wedding, he had begged her not to marry him.
She thought he was being protective.
But Daniel had said one sentence she had forgotten until now.
He didn’t meet you by accident.
Clara’s stomach dropped.
Her relationship had been engineered.
Ryan had spent years getting close to her.
Arthur’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
Ryan.
Arthur answered.
“Put Clara on.”
“No.”
Clara took the phone.
“What do you want?”
Ryan laughed.
“The same thing I wanted when I proposed.”
“What?”
“Your mother’s inheritance.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Where’s Daniel?”
“Alive.”
“Prove it.”
A video arrived.
Daniel sat tied to a chair.
Behind him was a familiar room.
Clara recognized it instantly.
Her childhood home.
Ryan returned to the call.
“Come alone.”
Arthur shook his head.
Clara ignored him.
“When?”
“Now.”
The line disconnected.
Arthur said, “Absolutely not.”
Clara looked him directly in the eyes.
“He spent years making me believe I needed him. He stole my money. He used me to reach my mother. Now he has Daniel.”
“And that means you walk into his trap?”
“No.”
Clara picked up Arthur’s spare pistol.
“It means he finally walks into mine.”
They reached Clara’s childhood house forty minutes later.
The front door stood open.
Clara stepped onto the porch.
Then she saw something beneath the welcome mat.
A fresh photograph.
It showed Arthur sleeping with his head in her lap less than two hours earlier.
Someone had been inside that basement office.
Someone had stood only feet away.
Clara turned the photograph over.
One sentence was written there.
Arthur’s traitor is closer than Dominic.
May you like
Behind her, the front door slowly opened.
And Daniel’s voice whispered from the darkness, “Clara, don’t come inside.”
