Chapter 6 - THE MAN BEHIND THE GATE
At 2:13 in the morning, Helen heard glass break in the east-wing corridor.
She had spent twenty-one years managing the estate, long enough to distinguish a dropped wineglass from a forced window. This was neither. It was the sound of a security panel being pried loose from a wall. Helen put on her slippers, called the internal emergency number, and received a recorded message saying the extension was unavailable.
Then the hallway lights went out.
Paige was still awake, reading the copied trust documents at her desk. Her bedroom door was locked from the inside, and the temporary phone lay charging beside her notebook. She heard footsteps beyond the suite, heavy and hurried, followed by a woman's voice.
"Paige? It's Helen. Don't open the door."
Paige's pulse accelerated. "What's happening?"
"I don't know. Stay away from the windows."
The corridor fell silent. Paige moved the phone off its charger and dialed Mara. The call failed. She tried Gabriel. The connection rang once before cutting out. A line of text appeared on the screen: EMERGENCY NETWORK RESTRICTED.
She had lived with Colin long enough to know that the most dangerous moment often followed silence. She took her shoes from beside the bed and slipped them on. Then she opened the emergency instructions Helen had placed in the guest suite on her first night. There was a service stair behind a concealed panel in the laundry closet. Gabriel had shown it to her personally, telling her she could use it if she ever wanted to leave without passing the main reception area.
She had memorized the route because she had needed to know it was real.
A soft knock sounded at her door.
"Miss Mercer," a man's voice said. "Security. Mr. Rossy wants you downstairs."
"What's your name?"
"Officer Grant. Open up."
Paige had met every officer assigned to her wing. There was no Grant.
"Tell him I'll come through the main staircase," she said.
The man's voice hardened. "Open the door now."
A metallic click followed. Someone was testing the lock.
Paige moved toward the closet and pushed aside the laundry shelf. Her hands shook, but the panel opened. She carried her notebook and phone inside, leaving everything else. Before closing the panel, she heard the bedroom door splinter.
She descended three flights into a narrow concrete passage and emerged beside the service kitchen. Helen was there, crouched behind a stack of linen carts. Blood marked one sleeve, though she was standing without difficulty.
"Are you hurt?" Paige whispered.
"Cut on a door frame. It's not serious. Tomas sent men to your rooms. I heard them say your name."
"How do you know it was Tomas?"
"I heard his voice on the radio. He told them to bring you to the lower garage."
A burst of distant gunfire echoed through the building. Paige went rigid. Helen pressed a hand against her arm, then immediately withdrew it.
"The old gardener's gate opens onto the north path," Helen said. "If we can get to it, we can call from beyond the signal blockers."
They moved through the dark pantry to a rear door. Paige lifted the latch carefully. Outside, the grounds were wet with mist. A vehicle moved along the far perimeter road, headlights sweeping across wet trees.
The path behind the greenhouse was unfamiliar in darkness. Paige remembered the estate map Gabriel had shown her on her first day, including the emergency assembly point near the gardener's gate. She had studied it because she wanted more than a man's assurance that she could leave. Twice Helen faltered on the wet stones, and twice Paige stopped so they could regain their balance rather than rush blindly into open ground. Somewhere above them a security siren began and stopped abruptly. Paige kept her breathing slow enough to listen. They heard a car engine, then the unmistakable crack of a radio transmission from the wrong side of the greenhouse. She guided Helen behind a row of empty planters, waited until the headlights passed, and counted to ten before moving again. Their safety depended on patience as much as speed.
They reached the greenhouse before a guard stepped into their path. He carried a pistol but held it toward the ground.
"Miss Mercer. Mr. Rossy is trying to find you."
Paige stopped. "What's his name?"
"Rossy?" The guard looked confused.
"The man in charge of the estate. What's his mother's first name?"
Gabriel had mentioned his mother, Sofia, during dinner the previous evening while explaining why Helen stayed through the winter. The guard hesitated.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Helen grabbed Paige's sleeve. "Run."
They turned toward the greenhouse's rear exit as the man raised his radio. Paige shoved a stack of empty terracotta pots into his path. They shattered across the stones, buying seconds, not safety. She and Helen reached the gardener's gate and found a heavy chain across it.
Paige searched the key ring Helen carried. One key had a red cloth tag. It opened the padlock on the second attempt. They squeezed through and pulled the gate closed behind them.
Halfway down the muddy path, the phone regained a signal. Paige called emergency services and gave the location, reported armed intruders, and warned that the estate's usual guards might be compromised. She asked for an ambulance for Helen. Then she called Mara.
"Don't go back inside," Mara said when Paige explained. "Officers are being dispatched. Stay where you can be found, and don't approach anyone carrying a weapon."
Paige and Helen sheltered behind a stone wall near a public access road. Helen's cut was shallow, but she was cold and pale. Paige removed her sweater and placed it around the older woman's shoulders.
"You saved me," Helen said.
"You told me not to open the door."
"You listened. Most people don't when they're frightened."
Paige thought of Catherine. Her mother had listened to Beatrice Rowan, and it might have cost her everything. Paige hoped the comparison ended there.
At the main house, Gabriel had been in a secure study reviewing files when his chief technician alerted him to a false fire alarm. The moment he saw the interrupted camera feeds, he understood the estate had been breached from within. Tomas was nowhere to be found. Two guard teams were receiving contradictory instructions under Gabriel's credentials.
Gabriel ordered his remaining loyal officers to stop pursuing intruders through the residential wing. Protect the residents, he told them. Let the police identify the attackers. He made his way toward the east stairwell with Inez, who insisted on accompanying him despite his objections.
They found the guest suite door broken and the room empty. For one terrible second Gabriel imagined Paige taken through the lower garage. Then Inez's phone rang. It was Mara, reporting that Paige and Helen were outside the grounds and had called the police.
Gabriel sat down on the nearest chair, a movement so sudden Inez stared at him. "They're alive?"
"Both," Inez said. "Helen needs minor treatment."
He closed his eyes. A man accustomed to giving orders discovered he had no useful order to give. Paige had survived because she had refused to depend entirely on his protection.
By dawn the police had detained four armed men on the grounds. Two were linked to Vincent Carr. Tomas's credentials had opened the staff gate, disabled the east-wing cameras, and routed Paige's emergency calls into a dead system. Tomas himself had escaped in a service vehicle. Investigators were preserving the logs.
Paige returned only after speaking to the responding officer and Mara. She came through the main entrance under her own power, Helen beside her. Gabriel stood in the foyer. He looked as though he had aged a decade in six hours.
"I failed you," he said.
"Your security failed," Paige corrected. "I got out because you showed me the service path. Those are both true."
"I want you somewhere else. Somewhere I don't control."
She folded her arms. "I was going to say the same thing."
He nodded, the corner of his mouth moving with weary recognition. "Mara has arranged a protected apartment. I'll pay the costs anonymously if you want."
"No. I can use the proceeds from the emergency fund my mother left me, once the trust is frozen. If not, I'll use the shelter. I need to know I can survive without your money."
"Understood."
Paige hesitated. "You can still call me. If I say yes."
Gabriel looked at her as though the small offer mattered more than a million-dollar transaction. "Then may I call?"
"You may."
Before leaving, Paige helped Helen label the evidence recovered from the service corridor. Among the discarded items was a disposable radio used by the intruders. Its last saved frequency matched Tomas's guard channel. There was also a folded paper list of room assignments, written in the same cramped handwriting as the estate's original wedding-day security schedule.
At the bottom of the list was an instruction that made Paige's skin prickle.
May you like
BRING MERCER ALIVE. RECOVER THE CATHERINE FILE. DESTROY THE ORIGINAL.
Whoever had sent Tomas wasn't merely trying to bring Paige back to Colin. They believed she possessed something her mother had hidden, and they were willing to attack a guarded estate to retrieve it.
