Chapter 1 - THE FALL THROUGH WINTER
The first thing Emma Mercer heard was the sound of fabric tearing. Her blue coat came off so violently that one sleeve remained caught around her wrist, twisting her small body toward the balcony rail.
“YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS FAMILY!” Vanessa Mercer hissed. Snow whirled between them, and the warm light behind the glass door made her beautiful face look carved from something colder than stone.
Emma was six. She had learned that speaking softly could sometimes prevent a fight. She had also learned that silence did not always save her. This time, there was no time for either.
Vanessa seized Emma by the shoulders. A single hard shove lifted the little girl's feet from the icy balcony tiles. Emma's fingers scraped the top of the iron railing before the world tilted away.
For one impossible moment she saw the winter courtyard below: white stone steps, a frozen fountain, and the snowbank beside the covered porch. Then she was falling through a tunnel of cold air.
Below, Daniel Mercer had just stepped out of the equipment shed with an armful of split logs. He looked up at the sound of Emma's scream. The logs struck the snow before he knew he had dropped them.
He saw red fabric above him, a little pair of boots, and the sheer empty space between his daughter and the ground. Every sound seemed to narrow into the rushing of blood through his ears.
Daniel ran. The porch roof had been built against a slope, putting the snowbank below the balcony closer than the courtyard's lower paving. He reached the drift as Emma fell toward it.
He caught her against his chest, turning with the impact as his knees collapsed into deep snow. Pain tore across his shoulder. Emma's breath came out in one small, broken cry.
“I've got you,” he gasped, wrapping his arms around her. “I've got you, sweetheart.” He checked her face, her neck, her hands. She was moving. She was looking at him.
Emma's fingers hooked into his collar so tightly they hurt. She made a frightened sound each time he tried to adjust his grip, as though the air itself might steal her again.
Daniel pulled open his jacket and folded it around her shivering shoulders. Above them, the balcony was empty. Vanessa was gone, leaving Emma's blue coat hanging from the iron rail like a flag.
“What happened?” Daniel whispered. His eyes followed the small fingerprints in the snow dusting Emma's sleeve. He already knew something terrible had happened; he needed her to tell him who had done it.
Emma pressed her cheek to his neck. “She took my coat,” she said, each word barely audible. “She said I had to go away. Then she pushed me.”
Daniel looked back at the balcony. The glass door glowed gold against the gathering blue twilight. He had never felt so much anger and so much fear inside the same breath.
A small shape appeared behind the glass. At first he thought it was Emma's reflection, somehow impossibly left behind. Then the figure stepped closer and pressed two hands against the door.
It was a boy. Eight, perhaps nine. His dark hair stuck up in damp strands, and he wore thin pajamas as if someone had pulled him out of bed without allowing him shoes.
He pounded the glass. His words were swallowed by the distance, but Daniel could read his mouth. Help. Help me. The boy turned abruptly toward the unlit hallway behind him.
Then a shrill voice carried through a narrow crack in the door. “She's coming back!” The boy struck the glass again, harder. “Please! Don't leave me here!”
Daniel stood with Emma in his arms. His knees protested, and his shoulder sent a warning through his entire back. He ignored both and crossed toward the porch, keeping the upstairs door in sight.
His phone was still in his jacket pocket. With numb fingers, he called emergency services and gave the dispatcher the address of Alder House, their estate outside a small Vermont mountain town.
“My daughter was thrown from the second-floor balcony,” he said. “She's conscious. I've caught her. There's another child locked upstairs, and the person responsible may still be inside.”
The dispatcher told him to stay on the line, keep Emma warm, and avoid moving her more than necessary. Daniel stopped under the porch awning, sheltered from the wind, and obeyed.
The boy above slammed both palms against the glass again. Daniel looked at the building's western windows. Their reflections were too bright to reveal who might be moving along the corridor inside.
His phone buzzed with a second call. Vanessa's name lit the screen. For half a second Daniel could only stare. The woman he had married was calling from somewhere he could not see.
He answered without taking his eyes off the glass. “Where are you?” he demanded. The question was quiet, but it carried the force of an accusation he could no longer hold back.
“Daniel?” Vanessa sounded breathless. “I've been looking everywhere. Emma's missing. Did she wander outside?” Behind her voice, he heard a faint metallic click, followed by something heavy sliding into place.
Daniel's grip tightened around his daughter. The lie was too perfect, too immediate. He turned slightly so Emma would not hear his next words, though she seemed to feel their weight anyway.
“I saw her falling,” he said. “And I know you were with her.” Silence stretched across the line. Somewhere upstairs, the boy stopped pounding. That sudden absence of sound frightened Daniel more.
Vanessa recovered first. “You must be confused. Listen to me. The west corridor alarm is armed. Don't open any of those doors until I get there. It's dangerous.”
The line went dead. Daniel looked back up. The boy had disappeared from the glass, but the faint outline of two small handprints remained, slowly fading against the cold pane.
May you like
Emma lifted her head. Her lips were blue with cold, but her gaze was steady enough to carry an impossible question. “Daddy,” she whispered, “if you save me, who saves him?”
Daniel kissed her forehead and listened for approaching sirens. He had arrived beneath the balcony in time. Now another child was trapped somewhere above, and the clock had started again.
