Chapter 2 - A DOOR WITHOUT A KEY
Tabitha read the message four times before she understood its most disturbing detail. The sender knew about the brass tag Sylvia had given her less than twenty minutes ago. Sylvia might have sent the warning herself. Or the person watching her might have stood close enough to see the exchange.
She folded the schedule and hid both it and the tag inside the lining of her cleaning apron. Then she called the number that had texted her. It rang once and disconnected.
The ordinary thing to do was leave. She had enough money for a bus fare and a room for one night if she could persuade the motel near the interstate to accept cash. But the east service exit was locked, and the guard normally assigned to the kitchen had been replaced by a stranger wearing the same uniform. No one had announced a security emergency. That meant whatever was happening had been planned quietly.
Tabitha called Dr. Sen's number from the estate directory. It went to voicemail. She left her name and told him about the message, tag and locked doors, then called emergency services. The operator took the address and advised her not to confront anyone. Tabitha asked for officers to check the property because staff might be unable to leave freely. She was careful to say what she knew and what she suspected were different things.
While she waited, she went to the kitchen. Luis, the night cook, stood over a pot he wasn't stirring.
“Where's Sylvia?” she asked.
His eyes flicked toward the ceiling. “Went home.”
“She doesn't drive.”
“Then she took a car.”
“Luis.”
He set down the spoon. “They took her to the annex. Nolan's men. She told me not to make a scene.”
“The annex?”
“The old laundry building past the garages.”
Tabitha felt the brass tag against her ribs. Whoever had sent the message was sending her to the same place Sylvia had been taken. It could be an invitation, or it could be a trap with her name written on it.
“Did she say why?”
Luis shook his head. “She said somebody was asking about a hospital. St. Agnes.”
That hospital was where her father had died. Tabitha gripped the back of a chair until the room steadied.
“Do you have a phone they won't check?” she asked.
Luis reached into a drawer and handed her an old prepaid handset. “My daughter's. No account here knows it.”
She used it to call the local police station and repeat her report. The dispatcher confirmed officers were on their way. That did not make her brave. It made her aware that the next five minutes would matter.
From the pantry window she could see the laundry annex beyond a stand of pines. Its windows were dark except for one rectangle of pale light on the second floor. A van was parked behind it, engine running. Tabitha took a photograph through the glass and sent it to the dispatcher. Then she waited in the kitchen with Luis, resisting the urge to charge across the lawn.
At the hospital, Graham Costa was being wheeled toward imaging when Dr. Sen received the message. The doctor showed it to him without comment.
“Get the police,” Graham said.
“I already told her to call them,” Sen replied. “I'm going to make sure the hospital knows you have an active security concern.”
Graham's jaw flexed. “Nolan is in charge of the estate.”
“Then you may need someone who doesn't report to Nolan.”
Graham stared at his own reflection in the dark window of the corridor. The cut over his eyebrow was cleaned and covered; the pain in his side made every breath a negotiation. He had been attacked during what should have been a private meeting at the Hudson freight offices. Two masked men had appeared when the power failed. Nolan's team arrived too late. Until now Graham had blamed the attackers for that delay, not the people controlling the response.
“Call Evelyn Park,” he told Sen. “She's my outside counsel. Tell her I'm ready to answer questions.”
Sen did not smile. “You should have done that before you were hurt.”
“Probably.”
He had never been fond of being corrected, least of all by a physician. Yet the alternative tonight was to remain surrounded by men whose loyalty had become impossible to distinguish from obedience.
Back at the estate, headlights swept across the kitchen wall. A police cruiser rolled through the gate and stopped near the main doors. Luis exhaled so hard Tabitha heard it. Nolan walked out to meet the officers with the easy confidence of a man greeting a delivery.
Tabitha stayed where she was long enough to watch him gesture toward the house, then moved into the hall with Luis beside her. She spoke to the officers before Nolan could usher them away.
“I'm the person who called,” she said. “A staff member is missing. Her name is Sylvia Grant. I believe she's in the laundry annex.”
Nolan's expression didn't change. “Miss Mercer is upset. She witnessed a traumatic medical emergency.”
“That's true,” Tabitha replied. “I also saw men escort Sylvia toward the annex. Luis saw it too.”
One officer turned to the cook. He nodded.
Nolan sighed. “There is no abduction. Sylvia was asked to review an internal security matter.”
“Then she can tell us that herself,” the officer said.
It was the first time Tabitha had heard someone interrupt Nolan without looking over his shoulder afterward. The officers requested access to the annex. Nolan said he would retrieve the keys. Tabitha held up the brass tag, but kept it in her hand.
“I was given this by Sylvia. I don't know what it opens.”
The older officer examined the stamped number. “May we photograph it?”
She nodded. He did not take it from her.
Nolan returned with a keyring. They walked together toward the annex, two officers first and Tabitha with Luis several steps behind. When the door opened, a man inside bolted through a rear exit. One officer pursued him only as far as the edge of the parking area, then stopped to radio his direction rather than leave his partner alone.
Sylvia sat on a wooden chair beneath a fluorescent light. She was frightened, but not restrained. There were two cups on the table and a stack of documents in front of her. She rose when she saw Tabitha.
“Why did you come here?” she demanded.
“I called the police.”
Sylvia pressed a hand against her mouth. Her eyes moved toward Nolan and then back to Tabitha.
“He told me there'd be no trouble if I just signed.”
“What were you asked to sign?” the officer asked.
Sylvia pointed to the top sheet. It was a statement saying that Tabitha had tampered with Graham Costa's medical kit and entered the study without authorization. Beneath it was a termination form and a confidentiality agreement. The signature lines were blank.
Nolan spread his hands. “It's a misunderstanding.”
“Whose handwriting is this?” Tabitha asked. She indicated a note written across the upper margin: SHE KNOWS ABOUT THE HOSPITAL.
Nolan didn't answer.
The officer photographed the documents and asked everyone to remain while he contacted a supervisor. Sylvia began to cry soundlessly, angry at herself for showing it. Luis pulled a chair close to hers.
Tabitha looked at the brass tag. She turned it over beneath the cold light and found a tiny line of lettering on the back that she had missed before.
COSTA FREIGHT — LOCKER 19.
The name took her back eight years, to the plastic bags of personal belongings the hospital had handed her after Emilio Mercer died. Her father's work shirt had carried the same emblem. He had driven refrigerated deliveries for Costa Freight until an emergency brought him to St. Agnes with severe injuries no one could explain clearly to a grieving sixteen-year-old.
She looked up at Sylvia. “You knew him.”
Sylvia closed her eyes.
“I knew where the last delivery went,” she said. “And I knew that if I ever told you, I'd have to admit what I helped hide.”
The officer asked her to explain.
Sylvia looked straight at Tabitha, no longer trying to protect the household or herself.
“Your father didn't die because a doctor forgot him,” she whispered. “He died because somebody ordered a truck to disappear. Graham Costa signed the contract. Nolan Price made sure the truck never arrived.”
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Luis found two blankets in a storage cupboard and laid them across Sylvia's shoulders. He had worked at the estate for fifteen years and seldom contradicted anybody above him. Now he looked directly at Nolan and said that he would give the same account wherever the police wanted him to give it. His voice shook, but he did not lower his eyes. Tabitha had never seen him stand so straight.
Tabitha felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. She wanted to reject the accusation. She wanted to shout that Sylvia had lied for eleven months. But the unsigned confession on the table, the ambulance leaving the grounds, and the tag cutting into her hand all pointed toward a terrible possibility: the man she had just saved might have been part of the machinery that killed her father.
