Chapter 2 - The Woman At The Door
The front door opened three inches.
Daniel pushed Lily behind the stone column and grabbed the heavy brass fireplace poker from the foyer stand.
“Stay with Eric.”
The door opened wider.
A woman stepped inside.
She was soaked from the storm, maybe forty, with dark hair plastered against her face.
Daniel froze.
He knew her.
“Rachel?”
Rachel Cole had worked as his late father’s executive assistant nearly fifteen years earlier. She had disappeared shortly after Daniel inherited the estate.
Rachel raised both hands.
“Don’t hit me. I’m not the one who locked the house.”
Eric stared at her.
“Then how did you unlock the door?”
Rachel held up an old Whitmore security key.
“Because whoever built this system used Charles Whitmore’s emergency protocol.”
Daniel’s father.
Dead eight years.
Daniel’s grip tightened.
“You have thirty seconds.”
Rachel looked at Lily.
“Not in front of her.”
Daniel’s voice hardened.
“Anything involving my daughter gets said where I can hear it.”
Rachel swallowed.
“Someone reactivated your father’s old containment system.”
Eric frowned.
“Containment?”
Rachel looked toward the dark windows.
“Charles built this mansion so he could isolate it during a crisis. Gates locked. Landlines cut. Backup power redirected. Internal doors controlled remotely.”
Daniel had never known.
Rachel continued.
“The relay Eric found isn’t the system. It’s only the trigger.”
“Who triggered it?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Lily stepped from behind Daniel.
“I do.”
Everyone turned.
She pointed at Rachel.
“No. Not her.”
Her small hand shifted toward the hallway.
“I saw Grandma putting the screws back.”
Daniel went still.
His mother, Margaret, was supposed to be in New York.
Rachel whispered:
“Then Margaret is here.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
May you like
Daniel looked toward the staircase.
Someone was already inside the mansion.
