Chapter 1 - The Door Claire Swore Our Baby Wasn’t Behind
Lily was clinging to me so tightly that I could feel her heart pounding through my jacket.
I had barely made it through the front hall of our mansion when my six-year-old daughter started pulling me toward the lower corridor beside the grand staircase.
Officer Davis followed close behind.
Lily’s blonde hair was tangled around her frightened face, and one small hand was locked around my coat while the other pointed toward the wine cellar.
I stopped.
The gray double doors had been wrapped in a heavy chain.
A large padlock hung at the center.
I had lived in that house for eleven years.
That door had never been chained before.
Lily screamed:
“THE BABY IS IN THERE!”
My blood went cold.
Our eleven-month-old son was supposed to be upstairs with Claire.
I moved toward the padlock.
“Who locked the cellar with this?”
Before Lily could answer, Julian appeared near the lower hallway.
Forty-four.
White shirt.
Dark trousers.
A longtime friend of Claire’s who had suddenly been spending far too much time at our house.
He raised both hands calmly.
“Claire wanted to increase security for her personal belongings.”
Personal belongings?
Inside a wine cellar?
Then movement came from a separate basement doorway farther down the corridor.
Not the chained cellar.
Claire stepped out.
Julian moved toward her immediately.
My wife looked as if she hadn’t slept.
“Marcus,” she said quickly, “our child isn’t in there.”
Lily twisted in my arms.
“You’re lying!”
I stared at Claire.
She looked at our daughter.
Then back at me.
And something in her face made every instinct I had explode at once.
I crossed the distance and slapped her once across the face.
Claire staggered sideways, clutching her cheek.
Julian lunged toward me.
I turned and drove one hard punch into his stomach.
He flew backward into the glass wine cabinet.
CRASH.
Bottles tumbled and shattered around him as he collapsed against the broken unit, dazed but conscious.
I did not hit him again.
Officer Davis stepped forward immediately.
“Enough.”
He moved to the chained doors.
Raised the bolt cutters.
CLANG.
The chain snapped.
The padlock struck the marble floor.
Officer Davis pulled the door open.
Then stepped aside.
I moved forward with Lily still gripping my coat.
I looked inside.
And froze.
I couldn’t speak.
Behind me, Claire made a small sound.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Whatever was inside that room was exactly what she had been terrified I would find.
And suddenly I knew Lily had not brought the police and me to a locked door because she misunderstood something.
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My six-year-old daughter had just interrupted a plan that had been underway long before I came home.
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