Chapter 2 - Two Red Lights Behind the Wall
Within ninety seconds, my mansion stopped being my home.
It became a crime scene.
Marco locked down the entire property.
Exterior gates sealed.
Garage doors disabled.
Staff phones collected.
No one entered.
No one left.
Theo, Miles, and Nora were moved to the west guest suite on the opposite side of the mansion.
Dr. Gable examined them again there.
They were exhausted.
Frightened.
But otherwise healthy.
Nora had already fallen asleep against Claire’s shoulder.
Theo sucked quietly on two fingers.
Miles stared up at the chandelier as if the worst thing in his world had finally disappeared.
I stood over them feeling relief and fury in equal measure.
Sophie had been right.
They hadn’t been sick.
They had been scared.
But of what?
Marco entered the guest suite.
“We found something.”
Elena sat beside Sophie on a sofa.
The little girl had refused to go downstairs.
She hugged her button-eyed doll and watched Marco.
I walked into the hallway with him.
“What?”
“Frequency emitter.”
Dr. Greene followed us.
He had stayed after hearing what was inside the vent.
Marco handed him a photograph.
The neurologist studied it.
“That could explain the crying.”
“How?”
“High-frequency acoustic output. Depending on the range, adults might barely perceive it. Infants could find it painful or frightening.”
“How dangerous?”
“Prolonged exposure could cause stress responses. Sleep disruption. Possibly hearing damage if the output was strong enough.”
My jaw tightened.
“How long?”
Marco answered.
“Device log shows activation two hours and seventeen minutes before Sophie found it.”
Exactly when the crying had started.
I looked through the open doorway at my children.
Someone had intentionally terrorized eight-month-old babies.
There are crimes people commit for money.
Others for revenge.
But hurting children changes the rules.
“Who installed it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“You have cameras.”
“Whoever did it knows our camera system.”
That stopped me.
Marco lowered his voice.
“Nursery hallway footage shows nothing unusual for three days. But the vent screws were replaced recently.”
“So there should be footage.”
“Yes.”
“Unless?”
“The footage was edited.”
I stared at him.
“By someone with access.”
He nodded.
My home employed forty-three people.
Housekeepers.
Cooks.
Drivers.
Groundskeepers.
Security personnel.
Nannies.
Maintenance workers.
Some had been with my family for over a decade.
Any one of them could have entered the nursery.
But only a small group had access to the internal security archive.
“Names.”
“I’m building the list.”
“Build it faster.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“I know.”
A technician arrived from Marco’s private security company.
He wore protective gloves and carried a sealed electronics kit.
Two guards escorted him upstairs.
I followed.
The nursery looked different now.
The same furniture.
Same warm lamps.
Same toys.
Yet once you discover someone has hidden a camera in a room, everything changes.
Every shadow becomes suspicious.
Every innocent object becomes a possible threat.
The technician examined the device.
“Custom build,” he said.
“Traceable?”
“Maybe components. But whoever assembled this knew what they were doing.”
He disconnected one wire.
Marco stopped him.
“Careful.”
“It’s isolated.”
“What does it connect to?”
The technician used a small scanner.
He followed the wiring downward.
“It passes behind the wall.”
“To where?”
“Lower floor.”
“Which room?”
He looked at the digital map.
“Storage corridor.”
Marco turned toward me.
“That corridor was renovated last month.”
I remembered.
A water pipe had burst behind the laundry room.
Contractors spent six days replacing wall panels.
“Who supervised?”
“Facilities.”
“Which means?”
“Victor Hale.”
Victor had managed the estate for four years.
Forty-six.
Former hotel executive.
Organized.
Precise.
Trusted.
He knew every contractor, every key code, every staff schedule.
“Where is Victor?”
Marco radioed downstairs.
The answer came quickly.
Victor Hale had left the estate at 7:40 p.m.
Almost an hour before the babies began screaming.
“Why?”
“His mother is supposedly ill.”
“Supposedly?”
Marco’s expression told me enough.
One of his men had already checked.
Victor’s mother had been dead for three years.
I felt something cold settle inside my chest.
“Find him.”
Marco reached for his phone.
Then Sophie spoke behind us.
“He didn’t put it there.”
We turned.
She stood in the doorway beside Elena.
Elena looked embarrassed again.
“Sophie, sweetheart—”
I raised a hand.
“What did you say?”
Sophie pointed at the open vent.
“The man didn’t put it there.”
“What man?”
“The man with the shiny shoes.”
Marco crouched to her height.
“You saw someone?”
She nodded.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Elena’s eyes widened.
“You were downstairs yesterday.”
Sophie shook her head.
“I came to see the babies.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“You were folding towels.”
I kept my voice gentle.
“What did you see?”
Sophie thought carefully.
“A lady.”
Marco and I exchanged another glance.
“What lady?” I asked.
“She was by the baby bed.”
“What did she look like?”
Sophie shrugged.
“Pretty.”
That described half the staff to a four-year-old.
“Hair?”
“Dark.”
“Clothes?”
“Black.”
“Uniform?”
Sophie shook her head.
“No. Pretty black.”
A dress.
Or suit.
“Did she see you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She smiled.”
I felt unease crawl up my spine.
“What did she say?”
Sophie hugged the doll tighter.
“She said I wasn’t supposed to be upstairs.”
“Anything else?”
Sophie nodded.
“She gave me candy.”
Elena’s face hardened.
“You ate candy from a stranger?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
Sophie reached into the tiny pocket of her dress.
She pulled out a wrapped peppermint.
Marco immediately placed it in an evidence bag.
“You kept it?”
“She told me to eat it.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Sophie looked offended by the question.
“I don’t like peppermint.”
Under different circumstances I might have laughed.
Marco didn’t.
He handed the candy to the technician.
“Test it.”
The technician left.
Elena wrapped one arm around Sophie.
“I should have watched her better.”
“No,” I said.
Elena looked at me.
“This person works inside my security system. That is not your failure.”
My gaze shifted to Sophie.
“You did something very brave tonight.”
She considered this.
“Can the babies come back now?”
“Not yet.”
She nodded seriously.
“They shouldn’t sleep here.”
“Why?”
She pointed beneath Theo’s crib again.
“Because the noise is still there.”
Dr. Greene frowned.
“The device is disconnected.”
Sophie shook her head.
“Not that noise.”
My skin prickled.
“What noise?”
She lowered her voice.
“Ticking.”
Marco dropped to one knee.
He pressed his ear against the carpet.
Nothing.
Then he removed a small acoustic sensor from the technician’s kit.
A faint rhythmic signal appeared on the display.
Tick.
Pause.
Tick.
Pause.
Marco looked at me.
“Everybody out.”
This time I obeyed immediately.
The floorboards were lifted twenty minutes later.
Beneath the nursery, hidden between support beams, investigators discovered a second device.
Not explosive.
Something stranger.
A relay unit connected to six wires that spread in different directions throughout the mansion.
The nursery had only been one node.
One point in a larger system.
Marco followed the first wire.
Kitchen.
Second.
Security office.
Third.
My private study.
Fourth.
Garage.
Fifth.
West staircase.
Sixth.
Master bedroom.
Someone had created an invisible network inside my home.
And every line converged beneath my children.
The technician stared at the wiring map.
“This took weeks.”
Marco’s voice became hard.
“Maybe months.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone looked at me.
I answered.
Silence.
Then a distorted voice.
“You should have ignored the crying.”
My blood chilled.
“Who is this?”
A soft laugh.
“You used to understand warnings, Adrien.”
The line disconnected.
Marco immediately began tracing the call.
I stared at the phone.
Used to understand.
That sentence bothered me.
Because it sounded personal.
Not like an enemy speaking to a stranger.
Like someone who knew exactly what kind of man I had been before my children were born.
Marco looked up from his device.
“Burner phone.”
“Location?”
His expression tightened.
“Signal originated inside the estate perimeter.”
We both turned toward the window.
Outside, beyond the nursery glass, the gardens stretched into darkness.
Somewhere on my property, the person who had terrorized my children might still be watching.
Then one of Marco’s men rushed into the hallway.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
He held a tablet.
Security footage showed a black sedan leaving through the service gate at 7:42 p.m.
Victor Hale’s car.
But Victor wasn’t driving.
A woman was.
Dark hair.
Black clothing.
And before the car disappeared from view, she turned slightly toward the security camera.
I recognized her.
Not from my staff.
Not from business.
From a photograph I had locked in my private study eleven years earlier.
A woman everyone believed was dead.
And she had once promised me that if I ever betrayed her, she would take away the one thing I loved most.
Back then, I had nothing to lose.
Now I had three children asleep down the hall.
May you like
And the past had finally found them.
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