Chapter 13 - The Candlestick on the Pillow
Leo Vance sat on the edge of his bed in the high-security safe house, his hands locked together between his knees. At eleven years old, his knuckles were already calloused from clinging to doorframes, from shielding his baby sister from Eleanor’s manic rages.
The safe house was a concrete bunker beneath an abandoned textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, arranged by one of Arthur's oldest military buddies. There were no windows. Only three-inch-thick steel reinforced doors and flickering fluorescent lights that buzzed like angry hornets.
In the corner, baby Lily was playing with a set of wooden stacking blocks. She stacked three, knocked them down, and giggled.
"Leo," she babbled, holding up a square block. "Look. Tall."
Leo forced a faint smile, though the tightness in his chest felt like a noose. "Good job, Lil. Make it taller."
His eyes drifted to the security monitor mounted near the ceiling. It showed the exterior perimeter of the mill: empty gravel lots, rusted shipping containers, and torrential rain pounding the asphalt. Arthur had been gone for four hours. He had told Leo to lock the secondary deadbolts and not to open the door for anyone—not even God himself—unless he heard three distinct knocks followed by Sarah’s maiden name.
Suddenly, the screen flickered.
A burst of static ripped across the monitor. Leo leaped to his feet, instantly stepping between the monitor and his sister.
The camera angle had changed.
It wasn't showing the exterior lot anymore. The feed had been rerouted to an interior camera—a camera positioned directly behind Leo's bedroom door.
Leo spun around, his breath catching in his throat.
The heavy steel door was locked. The deadbolts were thrown. The heavy drop-bar was firmly in place.
*Then how is the camera there?*
A soft clicking sound came from the master bedroom across the corridor—the room Arthur had claimed. Leo walked toward it on tiptoe, every nerve ending screaming at him to stay put, to grab Lily and hide in the utility closet. But an invisible wire pulled him forward.
He reached the threshold of Arthur's bedroom.
The room was pitch black, except for a single beam of light piercing through a ventilation shaft in the ceiling. The beam fell directly onto the center of the neatly made mattress.
There, resting on the white goose-down pillow, was an object that made Leo’s lungs seize.
It was the heavy mahogany candlestick.
The same dark wood. The same ornate, spiraled base. And clinging to the jagged brass rim at the top were dried, flaking crusts of dark brown—the blood from the night Lily had been thrown down the grand staircase.
Beside the candlestick lay a handwritten envelope. Leo’s name was written across the front in Eleanor’s unmistakable, elegant calligraphy.
Leo’s hands shook so violently he could barely tear open the paper. Inside was a single sentence:
*I told you, darling. Big brothers who can't fly shouldn't stand at the top of the stairs.*
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From the air duct directly above the bed came the unmistakable sound of a woman's low, melodic chuckle.
***
