Chapter 28 - The House Is Watching
Police detained Harold Venn for questioning.
Samuel agreed to provide a statement. Olivia refused protective custody unless Rachel accompanied her to the abandoned school.
Tessa opposed the plan.
“We have enough evidence to obtain a warrant.”
“By the time it arrives, the underground chamber may be flooded,” Olivia said.
“Then no one enters.”
“The source ledger is stored in a pressure vault. The water doesn’t destroy it. The water opens it.”
Rachel remembered her father’s message.
Water destroys paper, but it protects what lies beneath it.
The flood mechanism had been designed deliberately.
They returned to Rachel’s house to collect the brass key and gray ledger. Two police officers waited outside while Tessa contacted a judge.
Inside, Rachel noticed the pantry panel was open.
The underground key remained around her neck. No one should have been able to enter the concealed room.
She descended the ladder with an officer.
The steel door marked 909B stood open.
The shelves had been emptied.
The engineering plans, negatives, and document cases were gone.
Only the gray ledger remained on the floor.
A small red light blinked above the doorway.
Rachel climbed onto a shelf and removed a camera hidden inside an old pipe fitting.
It had been transmitting continuously.
“They watched us every time we entered,” she said.
Tessa examined the device.
“Then they know we’re going to the school.”
“That may be what they want.”
Back upstairs, Isaac knocked on the front door.
A delivery van had stopped behind Rachel’s garage ten minutes earlier. Two people carried boxes through the garden but left before police arrived.
Rachel checked the rooms.
Nothing appeared missing until she entered the study.
The wedding register was gone.
The decorative book containing Rachel’s signature, Marcus’s signature, and the names of every wedding guest had been stored in an evidence cabinet.
The cabinet had not been forced.
A brass key lay on the desk.
It looked identical to the key beneath Rachel’s collar.
She tested it on the pantry entrance.
It worked.
“They made another one,” she said.
“Or yours was already a copy,” Olivia replied.
Inside the wedding register’s empty cabinet was a mobile phone.
It rang.
Rachel answered without speaking.
Celia Ward’s voice emerged.
“Do not take Olivia to House Zero.”
“Why?”
“She is the reason the archive burned.”
Olivia shook her head desperately.
Celia continued.
“Ask her where she was on the night your father died.”
Rachel looked at Olivia.
“Where were you?”
Olivia backed away.
“I was fourteen.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I was in your father’s car.”
Outside, thunder shook the windows.
All the lights went out.
When the emergency lamps activated, Olivia was gone.
May you like
The front door remained locked.
A trail of rainwater led toward the basement.
