Chapter 14 - Whispers Through the Air Vents
Back at the Sterling estate, the silence was suffocating.
Emma lay in her canopy bed, her eyes wide, staring at the decorative plaster moldings on the ceiling. Outside, the rain had turned into a howling gale, thrashing the ancient oaks against the exterior stone siding.
Her nanny, Mrs. Gable—a woman hired by the agency just two days after Victoria's arrest—was seated in a wingback chair by the nursery door connecting Emma's bedroom to the baby's room. Mrs. Gable appeared to be knitting, her spectacles perched on the tip of her sharp nose. But Emma had noticed hours ago that the woman’s hands never actually completed a stitch. Her fingers just moved the needles rhythmically, clicking them together like teeth.
*Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.*
Emma didn't move. She recognized the rhythm. It wasn't the wind.
It was coming from inside the brass ventilation grille set into the baseboard beneath her vanity desk.
*Three short. Three long. Three short.*
S-O-S.
Her father had taught her Morse code during their summer sailing trips in Maine. Emma slowly slid her legs out from beneath the down comforter. The floorboards were cold under her bare feet. She glanced at Mrs. Gable. The nanny's eyes were closed, her head tilted back, breathing heavily.
Emma crawled silently on her hands and knees across the oriental carpet until she was right in front of the ornate brass grille. She pressed her ear against the cold metal.
Through the air duct, she didn't hear a mechanical hum. She heard a woman weeping—so soft it sounded like paper rustling in a breeze.
*"Emma..."* the voice whispered through the metal shaft. *"Emma, my darling... don't drink the milk she brought you. Look in the closet. Look behind the dollhouse."*
Emma’s heart pounded against her ribs. That voice... it wasn't Sarah’s southern drawl. It wasn't Victoria’s sharp, nasal tone. It sounded impossibly, terrifyingly familiar, like a lullaby heard in a dream before she was old enough to remember words.
"Who are you?" Emma whispered into the vent.
*"I am the one who built the maze, my sweet girl,"* the voice answered, shaking with a bizarre, feverish tenderness. *"Your father thinks he won. But he doesn't know what is inside you. Look behind the dollhouse, Emma. Before the nanny wakes up."*
Emma stood on trembling legs. Across the room stood her magnificent, four-story Victorian dollhouse—an exact miniature replica of the Sterling estate that Daniel had commissioned for her fifth birthday.
Holding her breath, Emma stepped behind the miniature manor.
In the wall cavity behind the dollhouse, where the baseboard met the plaster, a square panel had been loosened. Hidden inside was a small, black surveillance rig with an external antenna. A tiny red fiber-optic lens was pointed directly through the windows of the dollhouse, aimed squarely at the master bed where Daniel usually slept.
Beside the transmitter lay an open medical file.
Emma’s young eyes scanned the bold black lettering at the top of the first page:
**PATIENT: STERLING, EMMA**
**BIOLOGICAL MOTHER: UNKNOWN (DONOR 77-B)**
**LEGAL GUARDIAN: DANIEL STERLING**
**STATUS: SUBJECT OF THE STERLING-VANCE MERGER CONTINGENCY. NOT TO BE TERMINATED UNTIL PROTOCOL OMEGA IS RATIFIED.**
Suddenly, a cold, bony hand clamped down hard over Emma's shoulder.
Emma gasped, dropping the folder. She spun around.
Mrs. Gable was standing over her. The sweet, sleepy grandmotherly demeanor was completely gone. In her right hand, the nanny held a polished stainless-steel syringe, the clear liquid inside catching the pale moonlight through the window.
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"Curiosity, little bird," Mrs. Gable whispered, her voice dropping into a raspy, gutter growl, "has always been the Sterling family curse."
***
