Chapter 2 - The Men Who Never KnockedThe phone rang a second time.
Vincent tilted his head.
“Is that yours?”
“Yes,” I said.
It was the first lie that came to mind, which was unfortunate because I was holding neither a phone nor anything else remotely convincing.
Vincent's smile widened.
“May I come in?”
“You're already at the door.”
“Then we understand each other.”
He stepped inside.
The two guards remained in the corridor, their hands resting near their jackets. Vincent walked around my bed, studying my belongings with the mild curiosity of someone inspecting a property he had already purchased.
He picked up my first-aid kit.
“Were you treating someone?”
“Myself.”
“For a cut?”
“For a headache.”
He glanced at the bottle of peroxide.
“Quite an unusual remedy.”
“I work with cleaning chemicals all day. Sometimes I get careless.”
Vincent put the kit down.
His attention drifted to the bed.
The ringing had stopped, but the screen beneath it suddenly illuminated the floorboards. A thin rectangle of blue light appeared near the bed's wooden leg.
Vincent saw it.
So did I.
For a fraction of a second, neither of us moved.
Then I stepped forward and deliberately kicked the leg of the bed.
The phone slid deeper into the shadows.
“Sorry,” I said. “Cheap furniture.”
Vincent didn't laugh.
“Move the bed.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Move it away from the wall.”
I looked at him.
There are moments in life when fear becomes so enormous that it changes shape. It stops feeling like panic and starts feeling like anger.
This was one of those moments.
“You may search my room because Mr. Costello owns the estate,” I said. “You may question me because I work here. But you do not get to order me around as if I were one of your employees.”
Vincent studied me with new interest.
“Your father would have been proud to hear that.”
My heart struck my ribs.
“What did you say?”
For the first time, his expression changed. The smile vanished, leaving something sharp and watchful behind.
“Daniel Hale,” he said. “You resemble him around the eyes.”
I could hear the boiler starting behind the wall. Its pipes shuddered, and the little room filled with the sound of water rushing through old metal.
“How did you know my father?”
Vincent ignored the question.
“Did he ever tell you about the Costello family?”
“No.”
“Never mentioned the business?”
“He repaired boilers.”
“Of course.”
Vincent approached the bed.
I moved in front of him.
He stopped inches away.
For a moment, I understood why the guards outside never looked directly at him unless he spoke to them. He possessed none of Arthur's terrifying stillness. Vincent was different. He seemed permanently relaxed, and that relaxation made his movements unpredictable.
“Step aside, Norah.”
“No.”
He stared at me.
Then the boiler released a violent metallic bang.
Steam burst from the old pipe behind my hot plate. I had complained about that pipe for months. Management had told me the maintenance team would investigate it.
Apparently, the maintenance team had finally decided to be useful.
I grabbed the towel hanging beside my bed and threw it over the valve.
The hiss grew louder.
“Shut that thing off!” Vincent barked.
“I don't know how!”
One of the guards rushed in. Another shouted for someone to cut the basement's water supply.
In the confusion, Vincent turned toward the pipe.
I dropped to my knees and reached beneath the bed, supposedly searching for the shutoff handle stored in an old box.
My fingers found the phone.
I silenced it and pulled it out of sight.
Then, from behind the wall, something scraped.
A sound so faint that the others might have missed it.
I didn't.
Someone was moving through the narrow maintenance passage behind my room.
Arthur had not been hiding beneath my bed.
He had been hiding behind the wall.
I looked at the metal panel concealed behind the boiler, a panel I had assumed covered an abandoned heating access.
The panel now stood open by less than an inch.
And through that dark gap, I saw a pair of eyes.
Arthur was watching me.
Vincent finally turned back.
The steam had begun to thin, and the room was settling into silence.
“Well,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “That was unpleasant.”
He walked toward the door.
Then he stopped.
“Before I go, there is one thing I should tell you.”
I waited.
“Your father did something very dangerous twenty-two years ago. He stole something from this family.”
The photograph burned in my pocket.
Vincent glanced down, as though he knew I had hidden something there.
“Whatever he left behind, I strongly recommend that you hand it over.”
“And if I don't?”
His smile returned.
“Then the next person who comes looking for it may not bother knocking.”
He left with his guards.
I waited until their footsteps had disappeared upstairs before I shut the door and locked it.
Then I opened the maintenance panel.
Arthur emerged slowly, pale from blood loss, his good hand gripping the edge of the wall.
“You lied to him,” he said.
“You're welcome.”
“He will remember that.”
“Then perhaps you should have picked a safer hiding place.”
Arthur glanced at the phone in my hand.
The screen was still lit.
One notification remained on it.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: WE HAVE THE GIRL. STOP ASKING ABOUT THE LEDGER.
I looked at Arthur.
“What does this mean?”
He took the phone from me, and all the remaining color drained from his face.
“It's a message from my friend.”
“The one you killed?”
Arthur nodded.
I stared at the screen again.
There was a timestamp beneath the message.
It had arrived three minutes ago.
Arthur had supposedly watched his friend die almost four hours earlier.
May you like
He read the message twice, then looked toward the ceiling.
“Norah,” he whispered, “I think I killed the wrong man.”
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