Chapter 4 - A LIE TOLD AT BREAKFAST
At half past five in the morning, Ronan Vale fired me in front of eleven witnesses.
He did it in the breakfast room, beneath a chandelier that looked as though it had been made from frozen rain. The staff had gathered for their shift briefing. Celeste sat at the long table reviewing messages on her phone. Malcolm stood beside the doors with his hands clasped behind his back, looking pleased with himself.
Ronan entered without greeting anyone.
“Miss Ward,” he said, using the false surname I had given the housekeeper. “A word.”
I set down a tray of coffee cups. “Yes, sir?”
“I've received a report that you entered a restricted part of my office without authorization.”
For a second, the accusation hurt even though I knew it was coming. We'd practiced the conversation twice in the library. Hearing the contempt in his voice was different from imagining it.
“I was cleaning,” I said.
“You were snooping. Take your things and leave the estate immediately.”
Mrs. Finch stared at him. She had no idea this was a performance. A young cook looked ready to cry on my behalf.
Celeste set down her phone. “Ronan, perhaps a warning would be enough.”
“No. I won't have people going through my private property.”
“What about her wages?” Mrs. Finch demanded.
“She'll be paid through the month.” He looked at me one last time, his face hard. “You have fifteen minutes.”
I lowered my head. “Yes, Mr. Vale.”
The shame felt real because it echoed all the ways power had been used against me before. When my mother was sick, a hospital billing clerk once looked straight through me while I asked for another payment plan. When Sofia disappeared, an officer had suggested she simply wanted a fresh start. Now a room full of people was watching a rich man dismiss a maid like a damaged appliance. I reminded myself that this humiliation was meant to buy my sister a chance to live.
As I left, Celeste called, “I'll have someone drive you to the station.”
“That won't be necessary,” I replied.
Her expression told me she wasn't convinced.
Fifteen minutes later I walked out of the service entrance with a suitcase. A small delivery van waited by the kitchen loading bay. Behind the wheel sat Theo in a baseball cap that did nothing to conceal his face.
“You look like a man who has never delivered bread,” I told him as I climbed into the passenger seat.
“I'll have you know I worked at a bakery in college.”
“Did they let you drive?”
“That's a hurtful question.” He handed me a thermos. “Coffee. Ronan said you'd forget to eat.”
I looked down at the lid. Inside was a little note in Ronan's handwriting: We get Sofia back. Whatever it takes.
That almost broke me worse than the staged dismissal. I tucked the note into my pocket and stared through the windshield until I could trust myself to speak.
We drove down the wooded access road, past iron gates slick with rain. The sky was beginning to lighten over the Hudson, turning the clouds the color of wet cement. Theo pulled into a rest stop near the highway and opened his laptop.
“Ronan's going to the north gate,” he said. “He has the copy of Mara's letter. I made it look old enough to fool someone who doesn't read paper for a living.”
“Celeste used to manage archives. She'll know.”
“That's why he's not giving it to Celeste.”
“You don't know who will be there.”
“No. But I know where the estate's security cameras transmit their footage, and I've asked Ben to preserve the feeds. Not hack them, not delete them. Just keep a copy before Malcolm decides they suffered a tragic technical accident.”
I took a sip of coffee. “You trust Ben?”
“I trust the fact that Malcolm cut his pay after his wife had a baby. Ben has been looking for a new job for a month.”
“That isn't the same as knowing he'll risk his life.”
Theo nodded. “No. It isn't.”
At 5:57, Ronan called. Theo put him on speaker. Behind his voice I could hear rain and the idling engine of a car.
“The gate is empty,” Ronan said. “There's a package on the pavement.”
“Don't touch it,” I said immediately.
“I wasn't planning to.”
A long pause followed. We heard a car door open and footsteps on gravel. Then a woman spoke from somewhere nearby.
“Good morning, Mr. Vale.”
I grabbed Theo's arm. The voice was unfamiliar, older than Celeste's, roughened by cigarettes.
“Show yourself,” Ronan said.
“First, the letter.”
“You show me the girl first.”
A small burst of static sounded. Then Sofia's voice: “Ronan, don't—”
The recording cut off midword. A terrible cold spread through me. They weren't letting her speak. They were playing us pieces of her, the way someone might tease a hungry dog with scraps.
“What do you want?” Ronan demanded.
“You'll receive another instruction,” the woman replied. “For now, leave the letter.”
“Not until I see Sofia Morales alive.”
A click came over the line. Somewhere in the distance, a metal shutter banged. Ronan swore softly. Then he spoke to us again.
“There's no one here. The voice came from a speaker strapped behind the gate sign.”
Theo exhaled sharply. “They knew you wouldn't surrender the letter.”
“Or they wanted to see whether I came alone,” Ronan said.
I looked at the dash clock. 6:02. The promised deadline had passed. My phone remained silent.
“Ronan,” I said, “Sofia left a note in the tunnel. North Star is a person. I forgot to show you the scrap while we were running. The invoice said Westbank Services.”
“North Star,” Theo repeated. His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Wait. One of the trucking manifests uses a contractor named Northstar Freight. The company was dissolved last year, but one driver stayed on the payroll under a different vendor.”
“Name?” Ronan asked.
“Nadia Starling.”
A low, startled sound escaped Ronan. “I know that name. Her husband worked at Westbank. He died of kidney disease after the contamination.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
Theo scrolled. “Last known address is across the river in Ashbrook.”
Ronan went silent for a moment. “Go there. Don't approach if there's a guard. I'll meet you after I get out of here.”
The call ended. Almost immediately, my phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number contained a photograph of the north gate taken moments earlier. Ronan stood beside his car, looking down at the package on the pavement. The caption read: HE SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT THE GIRL.
Theo looked over my shoulder. “They know you aren't leaving town.”
“Then we don't have much time.”
We drove to Ashbrook without music or conversation. The town was a cluster of brick row houses and old storefronts with sun-bleached awnings. Nadia Starling lived in a narrow yellow house at the edge of a disused railway line. Two flowerpots flanked the steps, both filled with dead stems. A blue pickup truck sat in the driveway.
Theo parked one street over. “I don't like this.”
“Neither do I.”
We waited ten minutes. Nobody entered or left. Finally I got out with an empty bakery box Theo had bought as a prop. My fingers were cold enough to hurt. I climbed the three steps and knocked.
A woman opened the door two inches. She wore jeans and a faded sweater, her dark hair streaked with gray. Her eyes fell on my uniform shoes and the bakery box.
“I don't buy anything at the door,” she said.
“I'm looking for Nadia Starling.”
“She's not here.”
“I know about Sofia Morales.”
The door began to close. I put my foot in the gap without thinking.
“Please. She's my sister.”
The woman stared at me. Then she looked past my shoulder to the quiet street, as though expecting someone to step out from behind a tree.
“Get inside,” she said.
Her kitchen smelled of coffee and furniture polish. Photographs of a smiling man with broad shoulders crowded the refrigerator door. Beneath them sat a framed newspaper clipping about the Westbank neighborhood, where families had once petitioned the city to investigate contaminated groundwater.
Nadia pointed to a chair. “I drove supplies for the estate. Nothing else.”
“Then why did Sofia write your name?”
She folded her arms. “I don't know what she wrote.”
“Someone is keeping her somewhere without windows. She was there yesterday. Please tell me what you saw.”
Nadia looked toward the photographs on the refrigerator. Her expression changed, the way a scar might ache when a storm was coming.
“My husband worked at Westbank for eleven years,” she said. “He told me the company dumped things it shouldn't. When he got sick, they gave us a settlement if we promised not to talk.”
“Celeste?” I asked.
Nadia nodded. “She came to the hospital. Brought flowers. Sat with him until he could barely speak. She was very gentle.” Her mouth twisted. “Then she asked him to sign.”
“Did you transport my sister?”
Nadia's gaze dropped. “Twice. I thought she was a witness under protection. Malcolm said there'd been threats. I believed him because believing him meant I could tell myself I wasn't doing anything wrong.”
I felt a spark of fury so hot it made my eyes sting. “Where did you take her?”
“The first time, to the estate's pumping station. The second time, to an old medical annex owned by the foundation. Up in Coldwater Ridge.”
I grabbed the edge of the table. “Is she still there?”
“I don't know.” Nadia wiped her hands on a dish towel. “But a refrigerated truck went there last night. And a man from the estate said they were clearing the annex before the board vote.”
“Who said it?”
She opened her mouth. Outside, a car engine revved. The blue pickup in the driveway suddenly flashed its headlights. Nadia went white.
“Down,” she whispered.
The kitchen window exploded inward. Glass scattered across the table, and Nadia threw herself over me as something slammed into the wall behind us.
Theo shouted from outside. I heard tires screeching away.
For one stunned second, nobody moved. Then Nadia raised her head. There was a cut on her cheek, but she was conscious.
“They found me,” she said.
I stared at the shattered window. In the wall above the sink, a small dark hole marked where the shot had struck.
Nadia gripped my sleeve. “Listen to me, Elena. The annex isn't where they're keeping your sister now.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the truck went there empty.” She swallowed hard. “It came back carrying a woman.”
“Where did it go?”
May you like
Nadia looked directly into my eyes.
“Back to Vale House.”
