Chapter 2 - The Call He Never Made

Adrian's thumb stopped above his phone.

For a moment, he didn't speak. The light from the corridor sconces caught the silver watch on his left wrist. Beyond the windows, rain struck the glass hard enough to sound like handfuls of gravel.

"What do you mean, someone is planning to hurt me?"

I still had hold of his sleeve. I let go immediately.

"I heard something, sir. I didn't know who to tell."

"Tell me now."

My mouth felt dry. I glanced toward the staircase, half expecting to see somebody standing in the darkness.

Adrian followed my gaze. Then he turned his phone over so the screen faced the floor.

"Nobody is coming up those stairs without me knowing," he said. "Start at the beginning."

I told him about the folded note. About the six words printed across it. About the handle moving after midnight, once, twice, and then on nights when I had stopped counting the hours until morning.

He didn't interrupt.

When I described carrying my blanket upstairs, his eyes moved toward the brass fireplace poker on the marble.

"You thought you needed that in my own house?"

"I thought I needed somewhere nobody would come looking."

His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

"Last night, while I was sitting here, I heard two men talking near the servants' staircase," I continued. "I couldn't see them from the corner. One of them sounded like Dean."

"What did he say?"

I swallowed.

"He said, 'Thursday, after dinner. The north gate.' Then the other man asked about the regular driver. Dean said to change the assignment."

Adrian's eyes narrowed.

"Anything else?"

"The second man asked whether you would be in the car. Dean told him not to worry about you reaching Manhattan."

It sounded worse aloud than it had sounded in my memory. I had spent hours trying to convince myself I'd misunderstood.

"I couldn't prove it was Dean," I said quickly. "And I didn't hear everything."

"You heard enough to be frightened."

"I was already frightened. I kept telling myself maybe that was why it sounded so terrible."

He looked down at the phone again. Something in his expression changed.

"I was about to call my head of security," he said.

"Please don't." The words escaped before I could stop them. "I don't know who was with Dean."

Adrian watched me for another long second. Then he put the phone in his pocket without making the call.

That small movement did more to steady me than anything he'd said.

"Can you stand?"

I nodded, though my legs were stiff from the floor. Adrian stood first and held out a hand. I took it, rose unsteadily, and pulled the old blanket around my shoulders.

He didn't touch the fireplace poker.

Instead, he looked at the blanket, the flattened pillow, and the narrow space between his door and the wall, as if seeing for the first time how little room I'd allowed myself to occupy.

"You aren't going back to the servants' wing tonight."

"Mr. Moretti, I don't want anybody fired because of me."

"Somebody has been testing your door in the middle of the night. If I fire anyone, it won't be because you asked for help."

He opened his bedroom door and stepped aside so I could wait just inside, where the storm was only a muffled sound through the heavy windows.

Then he made a different call.

"Elena? It's Adrian. I need you at the house before breakfast. Don't go through the security office. Call me when you reach the front gate."

His voice was calm, but he listened closely to the reply.

"And bring someone who can preserve electronic records without asking my staff for permission."

When he hung up, I asked who Elena was.

"My attorney. She has worked with my family long enough to know when I don't want something discussed over the house system."

I looked toward the door.

"Won't someone notice I'm here?"

"I want the person who frightened you to wonder where you went. I don't want him to know what you've told me."

He telephoned the night house manager, Mrs. Evelyn Price, a woman in her fifties who supervised the domestic staff. He asked her to come alone with a warm drink and the key to an empty guest room near her own quarters.

Mrs. Price arrived wearing a dark cardigan over her nightclothes. Her expression changed when she saw my bare feet and the tear tracks on my cheeks.

"Oh, Claire."

I suddenly found it difficult to look at her. I'd passed her every morning pretending I was simply tired.

Adrian spoke before I could apologize.

"She needs somewhere secure to sleep. No discussion with the staff. No announcement about a room change."

Mrs. Price nodded once.

"Of course."

He looked at me.

"Where is the note?"

"In my room. Under the lining of my suitcase. I didn't throw it away."

"Good. Don't go after it. Elena will decide how it should be collected."

Mrs. Price brought me a pair of slippers and draped another blanket around my shoulders. Only then did I realize how cold I had become.

Adrian stepped into the corridor and looked toward the stairs. I heard him speak softly into his phone, this time to a driver named Tomas Velez, whom I knew only from seeing him carry keys through the foyer.

"You're not taking any instructions about tomorrow's route from Dean or Marcus," Adrian said. "I'll speak to you myself."

Marcus.

I knew the name. Marcus Voss managed the estate's security rosters and controlled the guards' work assignments. I'd never had reason to speak to him beyond a polite greeting.

When Adrian returned, I asked whether Marcus was in trouble.

"I don't know yet," he answered. "That's why I haven't accused him."

Mrs. Price led me into a small guest room at the end of her corridor. It had a lock, a reading lamp, and a clean bed. She stayed while I sat down, as though she understood that being alone behind another door might be harder than it should have been.

"You can leave the lamp on," she said. "And I'll be just across the hall."

A little later, there was a quiet knock. Adrian stood outside with his phone in his hand.

"I checked my schedule," he told me. "Tomorrow night, I'm expected at a meeting in Manhattan. The route request came through this afternoon."

"The north gate?"

He nodded.

My fingers tightened around the blanket.

"But the regular driver was changed," he added. "The alteration carries Marcus Voss's authorization."

I stared at him.

The conversation I'd overheard hadn't been a misunderstanding between two tired men in a corridor. Somebody had already begun putting it into effect.

Adrian's expression remained controlled, though I could see the tension around his eyes.

"Claire, for now, don't tell anyone else what you heard. Not because I want you silent. Because I want the next person we tell to be someone we can trust."

Then he showed me one more detail.

The notice about the route had been approved at 2:46 that morning.

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Only thirty-one minutes before he'd found me outside his door.

Whoever had changed the assignment was awake in the house while I sat against the wall with a fireplace poker, wondering whether I'd live to see daylight.