Chapter 1 - Thirty Seconds Later
The first SUV stopped so hard its tires screamed against the stone driveway.
Then came the second.
Then the third.
By the time the seventh vehicle boxed in the mansion, Mason Crowe had stopped trying to get up.
He sat against the shattered remains of the glass table, one hand pressed to his ribs, eyes moving from the windows to Adrian Vale.
Adrian did not look back.
He was kneeling beside his daughter.
“Emily, stay with me.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I said I’m fine.”
The answer came too fast, too sharp. The kind of answer people gave when they were trying not to break apart.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
He had spent twenty-four years teaching men how to read danger before danger announced itself. He had watched kidnappers smile. He had watched corrupt executives lie under oath. He had watched gunmen pretend their hands were empty.
But nothing had ever terrified him like his daughter refusing to look him in the eye.
The front doors opened again.
A woman in a charcoal suit entered first. Mara Quinn, head of Vale Protective Services, crossed the foyer with four security officers behind her.
“House sealed,” she said. “No one leaves.”
Mason found his voice.
“You can’t hold people here. Call the police.”
Adrian finally looked at him.
“I already did.”
Mason’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But Adrian saw it.
Not fear of the police.
Fear that the police had been called.
Mara saw it too.
She crouched beside the broken phone and pulled on gloves.
“You said he recorded everything?” she asked Emily.
Emily nodded.
“Not on that phone.”
Everyone froze.
Mason’s head snapped toward her.
Adrian’s voice dropped.
“What do you mean?”
Emily swallowed.
“He took my phone after I hit record. I knew he would. So I used the house system.”
Mason lunged.
He made it two feet.
Mara drove him face-first into the carpet and twisted his arm behind his back.
“Bad choice,” she said.
Emily flinched.
Adrian touched her shoulder carefully.
“Which house system?”
“The smart-home app. I linked it to the nursery cameras upstairs.”
“There is no nursery.”
“There used to be.”
Adrian stared at her.
This mansion had belonged to his younger brother, Victor, for almost twelve years. Adrian had been inside it hundreds of times.
He had never heard about a nursery.
Emily whispered, “Dad… there’s a room on the third floor Victor told everyone was sealed because of mold.”
Mara looked up.
Emily continued.
“It isn’t sealed.”
A sound came from above them.
Not a voice.
Not footsteps.
A heavy metallic bang.
Once.
Then twice.
Then three times.
Mason stopped fighting.
His face went white.
Adrian stood.
“What’s in that room?”
Mason said nothing.
The banging came again.
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And this time, beneath it, they all heard a woman scream.
