Chapter 8 - The Locked Room
The storm that had been brewing over the Pacific finally made landfall at midnight.
Torrential rain battered the estate, turning the immaculate sloping lawns into rivers of mud. Thunder rattled the reinforced glass panes of the mansion, drowning out all sound with the raw fury of the elements.
In the carriage house, Gabriel didn't pack his clothes.
He sat on the edge of a military cot, systematically assembling his combat gear. A black tactical wet-suit. A silenced sidearm registered under an untraceable LLC. Heavy zip-cuffs. An infrared thermal scanner. And, crucially, a micro-audio transmitter connected directly to the federal dispatch line of the Department of Justice’s Special Crimes Division—a contact he had activated the moment he left the main house.
He knew how Victoria operated. She was a narcissist running out of time.
Now that Gabriel was officially expelled and framed as an unstable lunatic, she had her scapegoat. Whatever happened to Nora tonight would be blamed on "the deranged ex-servant who broke back in to finish what he started."
She wasn't going to wait forty-eight hours. She was going to do it tonight, under the cover of the hurricane-force squall.
Suddenly, through the static of the radio scanner he had tuned to the estate’s private security frequency, a panic transmission crackled:
*"All units, all units. The power grid to the main residence just tripped. Backup generators are failing to engage. North wing is completely dark. Check the breaker room!"*
"Right on schedule," Gabriel muttered.
Victoria was cutting the estate’s internal cameras and security logs.
He stood up, chambered a round into his sidearm, holstered it beneath his waterproof shell, and slipped out into the driving rain.
The estate was swallowed by pitch-black darkness. The towering limestone mansion looked like a gothic ruin against the flashes of lightning that ripped across the sky. Gabriel moved through the tree line, utilizing the rain and thunder to mask his approach.
He reached the terrace. The infinity pool was overflowing, water cascading over the stone coping. Gabriel scaled the trellis on the east facade with effortless, terrifying speed, his combat boots finding purchase on the wet limestone until he reached the third-floor balcony outside the nursery.
The French doors were locked. Gabriel pressed a diamond-tipped glass cutter against the pane, scored a neat circle, tapped it inward, and reached through to turn the brass deadbolt.
He stepped into the nursery.
The room was freezing. The wind howled through the broken circle of glass.
The bed was empty.
The sheets were stripped, and Nora’s worn velvet rabbit lay trampled on the floor. On the rug, a dark, viscous stain remained where the silver spoon had dropped earlier.
Gabriel activated his thermal imaging monocular.
The green-tinted screen brought the dark room into sharp relief. Two sets of thermal footprints glowed brightly on the hardwood: one adult, wearing high-heeled boots, dragging a smaller, stumbling pair of bare footprints toward the service elevator.
The trail was less than three minutes old.
Gabriel checked the elevator shaft indicator on the wall. The analog mechanical dial didn't point to the ground floor. It didn't point to the garage.
It was locked at the sub-basement level: the old coastal wine cellar, built into the cliff face seventy feet below the estate, featuring a reinforced ocean-gate designed for historical rum-running during Prohibition.
A place where screams were swallowed by the roar of the Pacific surf.
May you like
Gabriel turned and sprinted toward the stairwell, taking the concrete steps four at a time into the belly of the earth.
***
