Chapter 3 - The Blood on the Stairs
I moved down the granite corridor like a shadow, my weapon raised in a low-ready position, my tactical light sweeping the floor.
The steel door moved silently on greased hydraulic hinges as I pushed it open with the toe of my boot.
The vault was ten feet by twelve feet, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of a portable battery-operated cardiac monitor resting on a folding metal table. In the center of the room stood a narrow iron frame bed fitted with pristine white hospital sheets.
The bed was empty. But the sheets were still warm.
On the small bedside table lay an open leather diary, a pair of thick reading glasses, and three vials of high-grade immunosuppressant medication bearing the label of St. Margaret’s Hospital.
I leaned over the bed, my thumb tracing the name printed on the prescription label.
Patient: Clara Vance Duca.
My heart stopped in my chest.
Clara Vance was my brother Julian’s wife. Seven years ago, when Julian’s car went over the embankment into the freezing waters of the Neponset River, Clara had been in the passenger seat. The state police had pulled the burned frame of the sedan from the mud three days later. They found one body burned beyond recognition in the driver's seat. They never found Clara.
We assumed her body had been swept out into the Atlantic Harbor.
She hadn't been swept anywhere. She had been kept hidden inside my own mansion for seven years.
A sudden sound shattered the silence behind me—a soft, wet cough echoing from the dark service stairwell beyond the vault’s emergency egress panel.
I spun around, my weapon aimed at the iron escape hatch set into the far stone wall.
The hatch was open. Drops of fresh blood formed a red trail leading down the narrow spiral stairs that descended all the way to the mansion’s sub-basement infirmary.
The light beneath the second-floor infirmary door I had passed twenty minutes ago flashed through my mind like a flare in the dark.
I exited the vault, taking the spiral stairs three at a time, my rubber-soled shoes making no sound against the iron steps.
When I reached the second floor landing, I kicked the infirmary door wide open, my weapon sweeping the room.
"Hands!" I barked into the darkness.
The beam of my penlight illuminated a scene that made my stomach drop into a abyss.
Lying on the stainless steel examination table was Grace Harper, my head housekeeper. Her apron was soaked in blood, a deep laceration cutting across her left shoulder.
Standing over her, holding a surgical needle and suture thread with trembling, blood-stained hands, was a pale, hollow-cheeked woman with long silver-streaked dark hair and haunted grey eyes.
May you like
Clara Duca.
And standing in the corner of the infirmary, holding a heavy iron tire iron covered in wet crimson, was my chief of security, Marco Rossi—the man who had served as my right hand for fifteen years.
