Chapter 4 - The Echo of the Past-4-
The night felt like it had been stretched thin, each passing minute a razor blade against the nerves. Gabriel stood motionless, the gun in his hand heavy, his eyes fixed on the space where the woman in the red coat had vanished. He looked like a man waking up from a twenty-year coma only to realize the world had been burned to the ground.
"Elena?" he whispered again, the name sounding like a plea.
Claire stood up, dusting the fabric of her skirt, her heart hammering against her ribs. She didn't know who this 'Elena' was, but she knew the fear in Gabriel’s voice. "Mr. Varrick, we need to call security. If she has a remote, if the room is rigged—"
"Security cannot help us," Gabriel interrupted, his voice dropping into a cold, hollow register. "If she’s back, it means the entire security grid of this building is compromised. She designed it. She designed every layer of the defense."
Claire stared at him. "Your wife designed the security? The woman who died?"
"She was a genius," Gabriel said, his eyes unfocused. "She was the lead engineer for the Syndicate’s protective systems before she married me. I thought I had saved her from it. I thought... I thought we had built a life that was separate from the business."
He finally looked at Claire. "You need to get Lily out of here. Now. Take the service elevator to the garage. There’s a vehicle in the third row, a black sedan. Take it and drive. Don't stop for anyone. Don't answer any calls. Get to the safe house at the address on this card."
He shoved a small, encrypted card into her hand.
"What about you?" Claire asked, though she already knew the answer.
"I have to find her," Gabriel said. "If she’s back, she won't stop until she tears this house apart. She was the one who taught me how to destroy, Claire. I know exactly where she’ll go."
Claire didn't argue. She turned and ran, her footsteps echoing in the long, dark hallway. She reached Lily’s room, her pulse pounding in her ears. She opened the door, ready to scoop the little girl into her arms, but she stopped.
The bed was empty.
The duvet was pulled back, the pillows tossed aside, and the IV line lay on the floor, the saline drip clicking against the wood.
"Lily?" Claire whispered, her voice cracking.
She rushed to the window, the rain-streaked glass reflecting the room behind her. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of an intruder. It was as if the child had simply dissolved into the air.
Claire sank to her knees, the realization hitting her with the force of a tidal wave. They had already taken her. While Gabriel and Claire had been distracted by the "Ghost" in the music room, they had bypassed the security—or rather, the security had been turned off.
She looked at the encrypted card Gabriel had given her. It wasn't just a safe house address. It was a digital key-card.
She turned and ran back to the music room, but the room was empty. Gabriel was gone. The piano was silent.
May you like
She realized then that the whole night—the whisper, the lady in red, the distraction—was a script. And she had been the lead actor.
She stood in the center of the dark room, the silence pressing in on her from all sides, and realized that her emergency babysitting job had just become a war for a child who was being used as a weapon in a battle between two people who were both, in their own way, monsters.
