THE HOUSEMAID’S MOTHER HAD BEEN MISSING FOR SIX MONTHS—THEN A PHOTOGRAPH AT A BIRTHDAY DINNER PROVED SHE HAD BEEN INSIDE THE MANSION YESTERDAY.

For several seconds, I thought I had misunderstood Gareth.

People did not casually discover that dead relatives were driving medical vans through their back gates.

Not real people. Not in real houses.

But nothing about the hidden room felt unreal.

My mother's prescription bottle was still in my hand.

Althea had gone pale enough that the freckles beneath her makeup showed through.

Gareth stared at her.

"You knew Thomas was alive."

She didn't answer.

"Althea."

"I knew a man was using that name."

"That is not what I asked."

She folded her arms as if she were cold, though the hidden room was warm and airless.

"I met him once."

Rowan made a sound of disbelief.

Gareth's face did not change.

"When?"

"Three months ago."

"Where?"

"A private dining room at the Marlowe Club."

"Who arranged it?"

Althea looked down.

"My father."

That answer landed differently.

Gareth's engagement to Althea had never been only romantic. Even I understood that much. The Vale and Marlowe families owned half the buildings people pointed at from tour boats. Their wedding had been discussed in newspapers as if two companies were merging beneath flowers and champagne.

Gareth stepped closer.

"Your father introduced you to a man he believed was my dead uncle?"

"He said Thomas had information about you."

"What information?"

"Financial records. Old ones. Things your father supposedly hid."

"And you believed him?"

"I believed my father when he said ignoring Thomas would be dangerous."

Gareth's eyes hardened.

"Dangerous to whom?"

Althea looked at me.

I knew before she spoke that I was not going to like the answer.

"To anyone connected to the woman he was looking for."

My fingers closed around the prescription bottle.

"My mother."

Althea's silence said yes.

I moved before I thought.

Rowan caught my arm, not roughly, just enough to stop me from reaching her.

"Why?" I demanded. "What did she do?"

"I don't know."

"You had her photograph."

"Thomas sent it to me this morning."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted me to make sure Gareth stayed in the dining room until after five fifteen."

Gareth's gaze sharpened.

"The van left at five twelve."

Althea nodded.

"He said if you went outside before the van cleared the grounds, people would get hurt."

"So you turned Sabella's mother into entertainment at my engagement dinner?"

The shame on Althea's face was brief, but real.

"I panicked. I needed Sabella occupied too. Thomas said she had started asking questions at pharmacies and hospitals again. He was afraid she would find the trail."

I stared at her.

"You knew I was looking."

"Everyone knew. You posted flyers in three neighborhoods."

"You knew she was alive."

"I suspected."

"You knew enough to use her photograph."

Althea's voice cracked. "I did not take her."

"But you helped move her."

"No."

"Then why was she in this house?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

Gareth turned to Rowan.

"Get the gate footage. Send the plate image, partial or not, to every traffic-camera contact we have. Call the pharmacy on that bottle and find out who picked it up. Quietly."

"Already moving."

"And put two people on Conrad Marlowe."

Althea stiffened.

"Leave my father out of this."

Gareth looked at her with almost no expression.

"He introduced you to a dead man. He is already in it."

Rowan left.

I remained in the hidden room because leaving felt impossible. My mother had slept on that cot. Maybe she had been frightened. Maybe she had known I was only a few rooms away yesterday, polishing silver and arranging flowers, while she sat behind a wall I didn't know opened.

The thought nearly destroyed me.

Gareth seemed to read something of it on my face.

"Sabella."

"I was here yesterday."

"I know."

"I walked past this room twenty times."

"You couldn't have known."

"What if she heard me?"

My voice cracked.

"What if she heard me talking to Maria in the hall? What if she knew I was here and couldn't call out?"

Gareth's jaw tightened.

"Then whoever put her here wanted exactly that. Don't give them your guilt too."

It was the first kind thing anyone had said to me all evening.

I hated how much I needed it.

A security guard appeared at the passage entrance.

"Mr. Vale, Rowan needs you in the surveillance room."

We followed.

The security room sat beneath the west staircase and smelled of electronics and burnt coffee. Twelve monitors covered one wall. Rowan stood before the center screen, where grainy dawn footage showed a black medical transport van passing through the north gate.

He froze the image.

The driver had turned toward the camera.

The man was older than Gareth, maybe late sixties, with a narrow face, silver hair, and a scar across one eyebrow.

Gareth stared at him.

"That's Thomas."

Althea sat down hard.

"I only saw him in low light. I wasn't sure."

"I am."

Rowan clicked to another frame.

A second figure sat in the passenger seat.

A woman.

Gray hair.

Small shoulders.

My mother.

I grabbed the edge of the desk.

"Mama."

Her face was turned toward the window.

I could not see whether she was conscious.

"Can you zoom in?"

Rowan did.

The image blurred, then sharpened enough to show my mother's hand resting against the glass.

Her fingers formed a shape.

Three fingers extended.

Two folded.

I leaned closer.

"She's doing that on purpose."

Gareth looked at me.

"What does it mean?"

"When I was little, she used numbers when she didn't want people to understand us. Three-two meant bus route thirty-two."

"Route thirty-two goes where?"

"Northwest. Irving Park, then out toward the old industrial district."

Rowan was already typing.

"The van headed north after leaving the estate. That fits."

The phone on the desk rang.

Rowan answered.

"Yes."

He listened.

"Send it."

He ended the call and looked at Gareth.

"Pharmacy footage. Prescription was picked up by a woman two days ago. Fake ID. But we got a clear face."

An image appeared on the screen.

I recognized her immediately.

She had served drinks at the engagement party the previous month.

"That's Celia."

Althea flinched.

Gareth noticed.

"You know her."

Althea stared at the screen.

"She's my father's private nurse."

No one spoke.

Gareth's phone buzzed.

A message.

He read it once, then held the screen toward Rowan.

The words were short.

WE FOUND THE VAN.

ABANDONED. 4600 BLOCK NORTH KILBOURN.

NO DRIVER.

NO PASSENGER.

I was already moving toward the door.

Gareth caught up beside me.

"You are not going alone."

"I wasn't asking permission."

For half a second, something almost like approval crossed his face.

"Good."

Twenty minutes later, we reached an abandoned medical office behind a shuttered rehabilitation center.

The van sat crooked in the alley, rear doors open.

Rain had begun again, thin and cold.

Rowan's men searched the vehicle while I stood beneath a rusted fire escape trying not to shake.

Then one of them called my name.

I ran.

On the floor of the van lay a red wool scarf.

My mother's.

I had bought it for her three Christmases ago because she always complained Chicago wind went through her bones.

I pressed it to my face.

It smelled faintly of lavender.

"She was here," I whispered.

Gareth stood beside me.

"Recently."

Rowan came around the back of the van holding a tablet.

"Boss, there's a camera in the loading dock across the alley. It caught the transfer."

He played the footage.

At 5:41 a.m., the medical van pulled in.

Thomas stepped out.

Two men opened the rear doors.

My mother climbed down under her own power.

I nearly cried from relief.

Then a dark sedan appeared.

A man got out.

He wore a long coat and carried an umbrella.

My mother stopped when she saw him.

Even on silent video, I could see the terror in her posture.

Gareth leaned toward the screen.

"Stop."

Rowan froze the frame.

The man's face was visible beneath the umbrella.

Gareth looked as if someone had struck him.

"Who is that?" I asked.

He didn't answer immediately.

Althea, standing behind us under the awning, did.

"His name is Julian Mercer."

I looked at her.

"Who?"

Gareth's voice was flat.

"My family's attorney."

Rowan swore.

Gareth stared at the frozen image of the man helping his supposedly dead uncle place my mother into another car.

Then he said something that made the alley feel colder than the rain.

"Julian drafted my father's will."

He looked toward me.

"And tomorrow morning, he was supposed to draft mine."

Nobody spoke on the ride back to the estate.

I sat in the rear seat with my mother's scarf wrapped around both hands. Gareth sat opposite me, phone glowing against his face as messages arrived from men searching traffic cameras, parking garages and toll records. Every few minutes he gave Rowan another instruction. Nobody used Julian's name loudly, as if saying it might warn him.

At the gates, Gareth finally looked at me.

"You should rest."

I almost laughed.

"Would you?"

He considered the question.

"No."

"Then don't ask me to."

He nodded once.

Inside, the engagement flowers were still standing in silver vases. Half-finished champagne glasses waited on the tables. The house looked exactly as it had before my world split open.

Then a phone began ringing somewhere in the dining room.

Not mine.

Not Gareth's.

Althea stopped walking.

The sound came from beneath the engagement table.

Rowan reached under the linen and pulled out a cheap black burner phone taped to the underside.

It rang again.

Gareth answered on speaker.

A man's voice said only four words.