Chapter 1 - THE WALLPAPER THAT DIDN'T EXIST
Gareth did not ask Althea a second time.
He held the photograph beneath the chandelier, his thumb pressed along the lower edge so carefully that the glossy paper did not bend. Behind the frightened face of my mother, the blue floral wallpaper climbed in a repeating pattern of tiny white roses and dark curling leaves.
The same wallpaper covered the adjoining sitting room.
I knew because I had spent half of yesterday helping the decorator move furniture away from the walls while two men hung it panel by panel.
My mother had been missing for six months.
The wallpaper had existed for less than twenty-four hours.
Althea stared at the photograph as if she could make the flowers disappear by refusing to blink.
"Gareth," she said, very quietly. "That proves nothing."
He looked at her.
"It proves the photograph was taken here."
"Or somebody edited it."
"Who?"
"How would I know?"
His voice stayed calm. "You had the picture."
The room changed.
It happened so subtly that I almost missed it. The music from the string quartet seemed to recede. The guests who had been smiling over champagne lowered their glasses. Two men near the fireplace stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence.
Althea lifted her chin. "I found it in the gift room."
"Where?"
"On a table."
"Which table?"
"The one beside the window."
"There is no table beside the window."
Her mouth opened.
Gareth handed the photograph to Rowan, his head of security.
"Lock the exterior gates," he said.
Althea's face snapped toward him. "You cannot be serious."
"No cars leave. No deliveries enter. Nobody uses the service tunnels."
A murmur spread through the room.
Gareth turned to the guests.
"Dinner is over. My staff will make everyone comfortable while we sort out a private matter."
He didn't apologize.
Nobody asked him to.
I stood beside the engagement cake, my hands shaking so badly that the little silver server rattled against the china plate.
My mother's face stared up at me from the photograph now held in Rowan's gloved hand.
Six months.
For six months I had called hospitals, shelters, police stations, church kitchens, old neighbors and every cousin my mother had ever mentioned. I had taped missing-person flyers to telephone poles until rain dissolved the ink. I had answered cruel messages from strangers who claimed they had seen her in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit. Twice I had taken buses on my day off because somebody swore an elderly woman matching her description was sleeping behind a grocery store.
Both times, it had been someone else.
Now the first real proof that my mother was alive had been sitting beside a birthday cake in the home where I worked.
And Althea had been holding it.
Gareth looked at me.
"Sabella."
I hated how quickly my eyes filled.
"Yes, sir."
"When did you last see your mother?"
"April nineteenth."
"Where?"
"Her apartment. She made soup. I complained that there was too much salt. She told me I had no taste."
The memory struck so hard I had to grip the edge of the dessert table.
"She called me that night," I continued. "I missed it because I was on the train. When I called back, her phone was off. She was gone by morning."
"Any sign of a struggle?"
"No. Her coat was missing. Her purse was gone. But her reading glasses were on the kitchen table. She couldn't go two blocks without them."
Gareth's eyes moved toward the photograph again.
"And nobody contacted you?"
"Nobody."
Althea let out an impatient breath. "This is exactly why I didn't want to show her the photograph. She is emotional."
I turned toward her.
For six months I had swallowed pity, suspicion and polite questions about whether my mother had dementia, whether she might have run away, whether perhaps she simply wanted distance from me.
But Althea's voice did something different.
It made the grief inside me stop trembling.
"Where did you get it?" I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. "I already told Gareth."
"Tell me."
"Watch your tone."
"My mother is in that picture."
"Sabella," she snapped, "you are an employee in this house."
"And she is my mother."
Gareth stepped between us before the silence could break into something uglier.
"Enough."
He looked at Althea.
"You are going upstairs with Rowan. He will take your phone, your keys and anything else he asks for."
She laughed once in disbelief.
"You are searching me?"
"Yes."
"At our engagement dinner?"
"You brought a photograph of a missing woman into my house and lied about when it was taken."
"I did not lie."
"Then you have nothing to worry about."
That was the first time I saw fear in Althea's face.
Not embarrassment.
Not anger.
Fear.
Rowan gestured toward the staircase.
She didn't move.
"Gareth, please."
His expression did not soften.
"Upstairs."
She went.
I stared after her until her red dress disappeared around the landing.
Then Gareth turned toward me.
"Show me the sitting room."
The adjoining room had been intended for after-dinner coffee. Someone had lit the fireplace. Lamps glowed against the new wallpaper, making the blue flowers look almost black in the corners.
I stepped inside and immediately felt sick.
Yesterday the room had smelled of paste and fresh paper.
Now it smelled faintly of lavender.
My mother wore lavender hand cream every day of her life.
I stopped breathing.
Gareth noticed.
"What?"
"That smell."
I crossed to the sofa and knelt beside it.
"My mother uses lavender cream. Cheap kind. White jar with a purple lid. She has used it since I was little."
I touched the edge of the upholstery.
A faint greasy mark shone against the dark fabric.
Gareth crouched beside me without caring about the knees of his expensive trousers.
"Rowan," he called.
His security chief appeared in the doorway thirty seconds later.
"Bag that cushion. Sweep the room. Fingerprints, fibers, everything."
Rowan nodded, then hesitated.
"Boss, the wallpaper crew was in here most of yesterday. It will be dirty."
"Then find the dirt that doesn't belong to them."
He turned toward me.
"Sabella, do you know if your mother takes medication?"
"Blood pressure pills. Something for arthritis."
"Names?"
I told him what I could remember.
Gareth moved around the room slowly, studying it as though it had become a crime scene.
He checked the windows. The fireplace. The space behind the curtains.
At the far wall he stopped.
One strip of wallpaper looked different.
Not enough that anyone else would have noticed. But the seam beside the bookcase had lifted slightly, as if something behind it had pushed outward.
Gareth pressed his fingers to the panel.
It moved.
I heard a click.
The entire section of bookcase shifted forward half an inch.
My skin went cold.
"What is that?" I whispered.
"Something I didn't know existed."
He pulled.
The bookcase opened like a door.
Behind it was a narrow passage.
No more than three feet wide. Unpainted brick. Bare bulb overhead. Dust on the floor except for a trail of recent shoe marks.
And one deep groove made by wheels.
Gareth went in first.
I followed before anyone could tell me not to.
The passage ended at a small room hidden between the sitting room and the old east stairwell.
There was a cot.
A metal chair.
A bottle of water.
A folded blanket.
And on the floor beside the cot was a white plastic cap.
I knew it before I picked it up.
Purple lettering curved across the top.
My mother's hand cream.
The room tilted around me.
I sat hard on the edge of the cot.
"She was here."
Gareth said nothing.
I held the cap in my palm like proof of a miracle I had been afraid to ask for.
"She was here."
My voice broke the second time.
He crouched in front of me.
"And if she was here yesterday, she can still be found."
I looked up at him.
"Why would anyone bring her here?"
Before he could answer, Rowan called from the passage.
"Boss."
There was something in his voice I didn't like.
Gareth stood.
Rowan entered holding a small evidence bag.
Inside was a prescription bottle.
My mother's name was printed across the label.
MIRELA VOSS.
My knees nearly gave out.
"Where?"
"Under the cot."
I took the bag with both hands.
The bottle had been filled only four days earlier at a pharmacy in Evanston.
Four days.
My mother had been close enough to reach by train.
Gareth read the label.
"We can trace who picked it up."
"What if they move her again?"
"Then we move faster."
A floorboard creaked behind us.
We all turned.
Althea stood in the passage.
Rowan swore under his breath.
"How did you get away from the guard?"
She ignored him.
Her eyes were fixed on the pill bottle in my hands.
Then she looked at Gareth.
"You need to stop this."
His voice went very quiet.
"Why?"
"Because you don't understand what you're looking at."
"Then explain it."
She shook her head.
"Not in front of her."
I rose from the cot.
"Anything about my mother happens in front of me."
Althea looked at me with something almost like pity.
That frightened me more than her cruelty had.
"Sabella," she said, "your mother didn't disappear because someone wanted to hurt you."
I stared at her.
"Then why?"
Her lips parted.
Gareth stepped closer.
"Say it."
For one second, she seemed ready.
Then Rowan's phone rang.
He answered, listened, and all the color drained from his face.
"Boss. The north gate camera just came back online."
Gareth didn't look away from Althea.
"And?"
"A black medical transport van left the property at five twelve this morning."
My heart stopped.
Rowan continued.
"It wasn't on the gate log."
"Plate?"
"Covered. But the driver turned his face toward the camera."
"Who?"
Rowan looked at me first.
Then at Gareth.
"Thomas Vale."
The name meant nothing to me.
But Gareth went completely still.
Althea closed her eyes.
I looked between them.
"Who is Thomas Vale?"
Gareth's jaw tightened.
When he answered, his voice had changed.
"My uncle."
A cold silence filled the hidden room.
May you like
Then he added the part that made even Rowan stare at him.
"And according to the police, he died twelve years ago."
