Chapter 2 - Seven Missing Minutes

The Moretti estate had rooms built for things normal people kept in drawers.

Wine had a cellar with its own humidity controls. Silver had a locked room. Security had a command center behind a door that looked like part of the library paneling.

By three in the morning, Lily was asleep on a leather sofa in that command center beneath Rocco’s suit jacket, and I was staring at seven missing minutes.

Caleb stood at a wall of monitors while two technicians moved through camera feeds. Hallways appeared. Stairwells appeared. The kitchen appeared. The nursery corridor appeared.

Then the timeline jumped.

“Again,” Rocco said.

One technician rewound.

The nursery hallway was empty.

At 10:42 p.m., a guard crossed the frame.

At 10:43, the image froze.

At 10:50, it returned.

Seven minutes gone.

Rocco stood behind the technician with his hands flat on the console.

“What caused it?”

“We’re still determining that.”

“That means you don’t know.”

“Yes.”

“Who can interrupt recording?”

“Command-level security.”

Caleb’s head turned.

The technician swallowed. “Mr. Stone. Me. Deputy Chief Bryce Keller. Two remote administrators.”

“Where is Keller?” Rocco asked.

Caleb lifted his radio.

No answer came back.

His face hardened.

“He was assigned west perimeter,” he said.

“Find him.”

Two men left.

I looked at the frozen nursery frame. “The cameras in the service hall?”

“Same gap,” the technician said.

“The pantry?”

“No camera inside.”

“Convenient.”

Caleb gave me a look that might have annoyed me on any other night.

I pointed at the screen. “You’re thinking it too.”

He didn’t deny it.

The doctor arrived with an update on the nanny, Tessa Quinn. She was awake but disoriented. Blood pressure low. No head injury.

“Sedative?” Rocco asked.

“Possibly. We’ll know after labs.”

“What did she drink?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Rocco looked at Caleb.

“Find out.”

Everything in the room moved when Rocco spoke, but I was beginning to understand that movement was not the same thing as control. His house obeyed him. Somebody inside it did not.

I went to Lily.

Her cheek was pressed against the sleeve of Rocco’s jacket. She looked impossibly small inside a room full of men with radios and weapons.

Rocco followed my eyes.

“She can sleep in a guest room.”

“She’ll wake up if I move her.”

“She can stay.”

I glanced at him.

His voice had softened without becoming gentle. He did that around children, I realized. Not because he knew how, but because some part of him was always measuring the risk of frightening them.

“What happened to Matteo’s mother?” I asked.

Caleb turned from the monitors.

Rocco looked at me.

The question was too personal. I knew it the moment I said it.

But Mara’s memorial had become the scene of an attempted kidnapping, and pretending her death had nothing to do with it seemed foolish.

Rocco answered anyway.

“Complications after delivery.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

No performance. No explanation.

Just four words that made the room briefly feel smaller.

“Did she have enemies?” I asked.

Caleb stepped in. “Mrs. Harper—”

“Elena,” Rocco said.

Caleb’s mouth tightened.

Rocco looked at me. “Mara was a corporate attorney before we married. She made enemies professionally. She also married me, which created others.”

“Did she ever say she was afraid for Matteo?”

His face changed.

There.

A pause.

A private decision.

“She asked me to change the nursery access protocol two weeks before the birth.”

Caleb turned fully.

“You never told me that.”

“She asked me privately.”

“Why?”

“She said too many people had standing access.”

“Did you change it?”

“Yes.”

Caleb’s expression sharpened. “Who had access removed?”

Rocco listed six names.

One stopped me.

“Denise Pomeroy?”

Rocco nodded.

The estate administrator who had produced the fake memo.

I looked toward the corridor.

“Where is she now?”

Caleb grabbed his radio.

A guard answered immediately. Denise was in the blue drawing room with the memorial guests. She had not left.

Rocco’s gaze returned to the camera wall.

“Bring her.”

Before Denise arrived, Rocco ordered the guest list divided by access, not by family rank. That caused an argument in the hall almost immediately. An older uncle demanded to know why a driver was allowed to leave before him. Rocco answered through the closed door that nobody was leaving now.

I watched Caleb write three columns on a legal pad: people who knew the nursery routine, people who knew the service architecture, and people with system access.

My name belonged in the first column.

That bothered me until I realized Rocco's did too.

For once, suspicion was being organized around opportunity instead of status.

Denise arrived three minutes later looking offended enough to be innocent.

That did not mean she was.

Rocco did not ask her to sit.

“Why did Mara remove your nursery access?”

Denise blinked. “She what?”

“You heard me.”

“I didn’t know she had.”

Caleb spoke from the console. “Your credential was downgraded fourteen days before the birth.”

Her face went pale.

“I handle staffing. I don’t need nursery access.”

“You had it for years when the room was unused,” Rocco said.

“That was legacy permission.”

“Did Mara speak to you about security?”

“No.”

“About Matteo?”

“No.”

“About Elena?”

Denise looked at me, confused. “Only once.”

My stomach tightened.

“When?” Rocco asked.

“During the pregnancy. Mrs. Moretti asked how long Elena had worked here and whether she had family in the area.”

I stared at her.

Mara had asked about me?

“Why?” I said.

“She didn’t tell me.”

Rocco’s eyes shifted to mine.

I searched my memory.

Mara had always been kind, but not unusually so. She said hello. Once she had helped Lily retrieve a crayon from under a radiator. Another time she had asked if Lily liked apples and then sent a bowl of sliced fruit to the staff table.

Nothing that explained why she would ask about my family.

“What exactly did she ask?” I said.

Denise hesitated.

“Whether Lily’s father was involved.”

The air left my lungs.

Rocco watched me.

“He isn’t,” I said.

“Dead?” Caleb asked.

“No. Gone.”

That was all I gave them.

Denise continued. “Mrs. Moretti asked whether Elena had ever taken time off unexpectedly. Whether she was reliable. Whether Lily ever came to work.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rocco asked.

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

“You decide that too often.”

Denise stiffened.

Rocco stepped closer.

“The memo.”

“I didn’t make it.”

“You produced it.”

“It was in the transfer queue.”

“Who alerted you?”

She reached for her phone.

Caleb stopped her. “Don’t unlock it.”

She froze.

“I can tell you. It was an internal alert.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. Automated.”

The technician shook his head.

“There is no automated alert for nursery transfers.”

Denise looked at him.

Then at Rocco.

For the first time, the offense left her face.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean someone wanted you to find that paper.”

I felt cold.

The fake memo had not merely been created to frame me.

It had been placed where the right person would discover it at the right moment.

A stage prop.

Rocco seemed to reach the same conclusion.

“Who knew you would be handling staff documentation tonight?”

“Everyone,” Denise said quietly. “It’s my job.”

The command-room door opened.

One of the guards entered.

“Mr. Moretti. We found Keller’s vehicle.”

“Where?”

“North service road.”

“Where is Keller?”

“Gone.”

Caleb swore under his breath.

The guard continued. “His security badge was in the car.”

“Phone?”

“Gone.”

Rocco’s jaw tightened.

“Anything else?”

The guard held up a clear evidence bag.

Inside was a tiny plastic cap from a medical vial.

The doctor stepped forward.

“That could be from a sedative.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Driver’s floorboard.”

Caleb’s expression went hard.

“Keller drugged Tessa.”

“Maybe,” Rocco said.

Caleb looked at him.

“You don’t think so?”

“I think a missing man is useful.”

“As a suspect?”

“As an answer.”

I understood.

Too useful.

We had a vanished deputy chief, an unconscious nanny, missing camera footage, and a fake memo pointing at me.

Everything fit too quickly.

Lily stirred on the sofa.

Her eyes opened halfway.

“Mommy?”

I went to her.

“I’m here.”

She pushed herself up under the oversized jacket and looked around.

Then she saw Denise.

Lily became very still.

“What?” I asked.

She pointed.

Every person in the room looked at Denise.

My heart kicked.

“The bracelet,” Lily whispered.

Denise stared at her bare wrists.

“I’m not wearing one.”

Lily shook her head.

“Not you.”

She pointed past Denise.

At the open doorway.

A woman stood there.

Celeste Cross.

Mara’s older sister.

She had come to tell Rocco that Matteo was sleeping.

Around her right wrist was a narrow gold bracelet shaped like a coiled snake.

Nobody moved.

Celeste looked from Lily to the bracelet.

Then to Rocco.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Rocco’s face emptied.

Lily crawled into my lap.

“That’s the shiny snake,” she whispered.

Celeste slowly raised both hands.

“Rocco,” she said. “I can explain why I was in the service hall.”

He did not reach for a weapon.

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He did something colder.

He locked the command-room door.