Chapter 2 - THE MUSIC BOX SECRET
The darkness lasted eleven seconds.
That was enough.
Eleven seconds for security doors to unlock.
Eleven seconds for cameras to reset.
Eleven seconds for every nightmare I had spent eight years preventing to walk onto my property.
“Nova!”
I ran toward the garden.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Children were crying.
Parents shouted.
Staff froze in confusion.
The movie tent had collapsed on one side.
I tore through the fabric.
Nova’s wheelchair sat beside a cushion.
Empty.
For one instant, I stopped being a businessman, a feared man, a man with plans.
I became a father staring at an empty chair.
Then I heard Sky.
“Mr. Hawthorne!”
Her voice came from behind the dessert table.
I ran.
Sky crouched there with Nova.
She had pulled my daughter from her wheelchair and dragged her behind the heavy catering station.
Nova’s arms were around her neck.
Both girls were trembling.
I dropped to my knees.
“Nova.”
“Daddy.”
I grabbed her.
She clung to me.
“I’m okay.”
I checked anyway.
Face.
Arms.
Hands.
No blood.
No injury.
Just fear.
Sky pointed toward the hedge.
“A man came through there.”
Vincent arrived with two guards.
“What man?”
“He had a black jacket.”
“That describes half Seattle.”
Sky frowned.
“He smelled like oranges.”
Vincent looked at me.
That detail meant something.
One of my senior security men, Owen Pike, chewed orange-flavored nicotine gum constantly.
He had worked for me twelve years.
He had carried Nova into the hospital the night she broke her arm at three.
No.
I refused the conclusion.
Not without evidence.
“Where’s Pike?” I asked.
Vincent spoke into his radio.
No answer.
Again.
Still nothing.
“Find him.”
I carried Nova inside.
She hated being carried now.
At eight, she wanted control over everything she could control.
But tonight she did not protest.
Sky followed.
In the secure family room, I placed Nova on the couch.
“Where’s my chair?”
“We’re getting it.”
“I want my chair.”
Her voice shook.
It was not about transportation.
It was independence.
Identity.
I understood.
“Vincent.”
He nodded and left.
Sky sat on the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
Nova looked at her.
“For what?”
“If I didn’t come, maybe the bad man wouldn’t.”
My heart tightened.
“This is not because you came.”
Sky looked at me.
“How do you know?”
Because people had tried to hurt me for years.
Because Claire had died in a crash I no longer believed was an accident.
Because someone inside my house had spent almost a decade waiting.
But children did not need that burden.
“Because adults make their own bad choices,” I said. “Children don’t cause them.”
Sky watched me carefully.
She seemed used to adults saying things they did not mean.
Nova reached for her hand.
“You saved me.”
Sky shook her head.
“You saved yourself. You yelled.”
“I yelled because you told me to.”
“Teamwork.”
Nova smiled.
“Teamwork.”
Vincent returned with the wheelchair.
Nova immediately transferred into it with his help.
Her breathing steadied.
Control restored.
He looked at me.
“Pike’s vehicle is gone.”
“Gate record?”
“Manual override from the security office.”
“Only supervisors have access.”
“Pike is a supervisor.”
There it was.
A knife made of logic.
“What else?”
“East camera caught part of the vehicle leaving.”
“Plate?”
“Covered.”
“Passengers?”
“One driver. Maybe someone in back.”
“Lena?”
“Can’t tell.”
I looked at Sky.
She was listening.
I could hide the truth for five minutes.
Not forever.
“Sky.”
Her eyes came to me.
“We went to your apartment.”
Her face changed.
“Why?”
“Because we couldn’t reach your mom.”
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
The bravery drained out of her face.
She stood.
“I need to go home.”
“No.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can.”
The words came out too hard.
Sky flinched.
Nova glared at me.
“Daddy.”
I softened my voice.
“Your apartment was broken into. It isn’t safe.”
Sky’s eyes filled.
“My mom could come back.”
“If she does, my people will know.”
“Your people scare everybody.”
“Sometimes that helps.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No.”
I crouched.
“Listen to me. You came here to help my daughter. I’m not sending you somewhere unsafe. You stay until we find your mother.”
Sky swallowed.
“What if she doesn’t want to be found?”
The question was too old for her face.
“Why would you think that?”
“She disappears sometimes.”
“For how long?”
“A night.”
“Where does she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she leave you alone?”
Sky looked away.
That answer made something dangerous rise inside me.
“How often?”
“Not a lot.”
Nova squeezed her hand.
“You can stay with us forever.”
Sky gave a tiny laugh.
“You don’t even know if I snore.”
“I do.”
“You do?”
“Daddy says I sound like a tiny motorcycle.”
I looked at Nova.
“I said a very elegant tiny motorcycle.”
Sky laughed despite herself.
Good.
I needed that laugh in the room.
Vincent motioned toward the hallway.
I followed him out.
“Tell me.”
“We found Pike’s locker.”
“And?”
“Empty except for a burner phone.”
“Any calls?”
“One number repeated for six months.”
“Trace?”
“Working.”
“Anything tied to Lena?”
“Maybe.”
He handed me a photograph from the burner.
Sky.
Taken from across her school cafeteria.
On the back of the digital file was a timestamp from three weeks earlier.
I felt sick.
“Pike was watching her too.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked through the glass door at the girls.
“Claire’s note said the truth about Nova’s birth.”
Vincent nodded.
“Maybe Sky and Nova are connected somehow.”
“No.”
He waited.
I hated the possibility before he voiced it.
“Grant, Lena disappeared after Claire died. She has private baby photos. She kept Claire’s music box. She sent her daughter to Nova.”
“No.”
“What if—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
Vincent looked at me.
He had been my closest friend before he became my head of security.
That gave him permission others did not have.
“You need to prepare for every answer.”
“I prepared for enemies. Not this.”
“What was unusual about Nova’s birth?”
“Everything.”
Claire went into labor six weeks early.
A winter storm closed half the roads.
Her usual doctor was unavailable.
We used a private clinic owned by a Hawthorne company.
Nova was born with complications.
For six hours, doctors were not sure she would survive.
Claire hemorrhaged.
Lena was there because Claire had called her before she called me.
I arrived twenty minutes after the delivery.
Twenty minutes.
I had always hated those twenty minutes.
“What happened before you got there?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who was in the room?”
“Claire. Lena. Dr. Mercer. Two nurses.”
“Mercer?”
“Dead.”
“Both nurses?”
“One moved to Arizona. One vanished after Claire’s funeral.”
Vincent looked at me.
“You never investigated?”
“I was investigating who sabotaged Claire’s car.”
“You believed the birth had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes.”
Maybe that had been the mistake.
The girls came into the hallway.
Nova had the music box on her lap.
“It stopped.”
“What?”
“The song.”
She turned the key.
Nothing.
Sky said, “Mom told me it only plays if you open the bottom.”
I stared.
“The bottom?”
Sky took the box carefully.
Her thumb pressed beneath the crescent engraving.
A hidden panel popped open.
Inside was a tiny keyhole.
I pulled the key from Lena’s envelope.
It fit.
Vincent swore softly.
I turned it.
The base released.
Inside was a memory card.
And a hospital bracelet.
I lifted it.
The plastic was yellowed with age.
Printed across it:
BABY GIRL HAWTHORNE
DOB: MAY 17
Below that was a handwritten mark.
A red letter B.
Nova’s birthday was May 17.
“What does B mean?” Nova asked.
“I don’t know.”
Sky stared at the bracelet.
“My mom has one like that.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
“What?”
“In her drawer.”
“What does it say?”
Sky thought.
“Baby Girl Rowe.”
“And the date?”
She went quiet.
“What date, Sky?”
“May seventeenth.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
Nova looked between us.
“Daddy?”
I could not move.
Two baby girls.
Same clinic.
Same day.
Claire.
Lena.
Twenty missing minutes.
The story I had known for eight years began to crack.
Sky whispered, “Are we sisters?”
Nova’s eyes widened.
I forced myself to breathe.
“We do not know that.”
“Could we be?”
“I don’t know.”
Nova looked at Sky.
Then at me.
“I’d like a sister.”
My throat closed.
Sky looked terrified.
Not excited.
“Mom said I shouldn’t ask questions about the hospital.”
I crouched beside her.
“What exactly did she say?”
“That some truths hurt people who didn’t do anything wrong.”
I understood that sentence.
Lena had been protecting someone.
Maybe Nova.
Maybe Sky.
Maybe herself.
Vincent’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then looked at me.
“We traced Pike’s burner.”
“To where?”
“The number belongs to a shell account, but the payment trail leads to a medical foundation.”
“Which one?”
“Mercer Pediatric Mobility.”
Nova’s specialist clinic.
My stomach turned.
The same foundation that had treated her spinal injury for five years.
The same doctors who told me her condition came from a rare birth complication.
The same institution I had donated millions to.
“Pull every record.”
“Already doing it.”
Another call.
This time Vincent put it on speaker.
One of our investigators.
“We found Pike’s SUV.”
“Where?”
“South Lake Union parking garage.”
“Pike?”
“Dead.”
Sky flinched.
I moved farther down the hall.
“How?”
“Looks like someone wanted it to look self-inflicted.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it wasn’t.”
“Anyone else?”
“Trunk is empty, but we found a woman’s scarf.”
“Description?”
“Green wool. Initials L.R.”
Sky’s mother.
“Anything in Pike’s pockets?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“A photograph of Nova’s birthday party invitation.”
I looked through the door.
Nova and Sky sat side by side.
One wealthy.
One poor.
One surrounded by security.
One apparently barely protected at all.
And someone had been watching both.
The investigator continued.
“There’s handwriting on the back.”
“What does it say?”
He read:
ONLY ONE OF THE GIRLS IS HAWTHORNE’S DAUGHTER.
My vision narrowed.
Vincent stared at me.
The room seemed to tilt.
No.
I had held Nova through fevers.
Taught her to read.
Slept on hospital floors.
Learned how to braid hair badly because Claire was gone.
Watched her first school play from the front row.
I was her father.
Blood could not change that.
But blood could explain why someone had murdered my wife.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A video.
Lena sat tied to a chair in an empty room.
Bruised but alive.
She looked into the camera.
Then a man’s distorted voice spoke.
“Grant Hawthorne. You’ve spent eight years protecting the wrong child.”
Nova rolled into the hallway.
“Daddy?”
I turned quickly.
She had heard.
Her face went white.
“What does that mean?”
I walked to her.
“It means someone is lying.”
“How do you know?”
I knelt.
“Because you are my daughter.”
“But the man said—”
“I don’t care what he said.”
“Could I not be?”
Children always asked the question adults wanted to avoid.
I put both hands on her chair.
“Nova, listen to me. There is no test, no story, no secret that changes who I am to you.”
Her eyes filled.
“Promise?”
“On everything I have.”
Sky stood behind her.
“What about me?”
The question nearly broke me.
Before I could answer, the video resumed by itself.
Lena lifted her head.
She looked terrified.
Then she shouted one sentence before someone struck the camera away.
“GRANT, DON’T TEST THE GIRLS!”
The screen went black.
A new message appeared.
MIDNIGHT.
MERCER FOUNDATION.
COME ALONE.
OR LENA DIES.
Nova looked at me.
Sky looked at me.
And for the first time, I understood the trap.
May you like
Whoever was behind this did not just want to reveal the truth.
They wanted the truth to destroy us first.
