Chapter 2 - The Chamber of Echoes
I stood up slowly, the dark oak floorboards groaning under my leather shoes.
The room behind that mahogany bookcase had been built in 1928 by my grandfather, Carmine Duca. It was an iron-lined panic room and internment vault, accessed through a concealed counterweight latch behind an leather-bound edition of Dante’s Inferno. In thirty years, only three living people had possessed the knowledge to open it: my father, myself, and my younger brother, Julian.
And Julian had died in a burning car off Route 1 seven years ago.
Or so the Boston Police Department had told me.
"Mia," I said, keeping my voice dropped into an even, measured tone that hid the sudden adrenaline hammering against my ribs. "How long have you heard the lady?"
The six-year-old girl pulled her sister tighter against her chest with her red, water-chapped hands. Her small chest heaved under her faded yellow sweater. "She whimpers when the big clock downstairs rings three times. And when the rain hits the glass... she knocks on the back of the books."
I didn't answer right away. I stepped past her, moving toward the west wall.
My hand reached out to the third shelf, my thumb tracing the worn spine of the leather-bound volume. I pressed the hidden copper release buried inside the binder's edge.
CLICK.
A heavy, mechanical thud echoed through the floorboards as the spring-loaded deadbolts retracted deep within the plaster wall. The heavy mahogany bookcase swung forward six inches on concealed steel hinges, releasing a gust of frigid, stale air into the warm study.
The air smelled of damp stone, ancient copper, and something sharp and chemical—the unmistakable scent of hospital-grade antiseptic.
Mia gasped softly, taking two steps back, her eyes wide as sauce pans.
I reached inside my suit jacket, my fingers wrapping around the textured grip of my custom Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol. I flipped the safety off with a silent movement of my thumb, pulled a small tactical penlight from my vest pocket, and clicked it on.
The narrow beam of white light cut through the thick, dust-motive gloom of the narrow stone passage behind the shelves.
"Stay here, Mia," I commanded without turning around. "Do not move from that rug."
I stepped into the gap behind the bookcase.
The corridor was six feet wide, paved with rough-cut blue granite blocks. At the far end, twenty feet down the dark passage, stood a heavy reinforced steel door.
The door was unlocked. It stood ajar by two inches.
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And resting on the cold stone floor directly in front of the open threshold was a fresh, white ceramic mug filled with lukewarm chamomile tea, a discarded strip of medical gauze stained with fresh blood, and a pair of silver surgical scissors.
Someone was living inside my wall. And someone in my house had been feeding them.
