Chapter 1 - The Footstep Claire Was Afraid Of
The floorboard creaked behind Ethan.
He did not turn.
Not immediately.
His hand remained suspended above the brass ring built into the edge of the floor panel, while Claire’s terrified warning still seemed to vibrate through the opening beneath him.
“Don’t open it.”
Lily was lying beside him, one pink bow loose from her braid, her small face caught between confusion and fear.
Another creak.
Closer.
Ethan slowly raised his eyes toward the reflection in the dark glass cabinet across the room.
No one.
Only the living room behind him.
The staircase.
The long cream sofa.
Sunlight pouring through the tall windows.
And something strange.
The door leading into the west hallway was moving.
Not opening.
Closing.
Someone had just been there.
Ethan rose immediately.
“Stay here.”
Lily caught his sleeve.
“Daddy—”
“Right beside the hole. Don’t move.”
He crossed the room fast and pulled the hallway door open.
Empty.
At the far end, another door swung gently on its hinges.
Ethan ran to it.
The service corridor beyond was deserted.
A narrow window showed the side lawn glowing peacefully beneath the afternoon sun.
Nothing about the mansion looked like a place where a woman could have been hidden beneath the floor.
That was perhaps the most disturbing thing about it.
Ethan returned.
Claire was no longer beneath the opening.
“Claire?”
Silence.
He dropped to one knee.
“Claire!”
A faint scrape came from below.
Then her face appeared again, farther from the light.
“Take Lily out of the house.”
Ethan stared at her.
Claire Bennett.
The woman he had once planned to marry.
The woman who had vanished nine years ago after leaving him a six-word note:
DON’T LOOK FOR ME. IT’S OVER.
He had looked anyway.
For months.
Then for years in smaller, quieter ways.
A birthday searched online.
An unfamiliar number answered too quickly.
A face glimpsed in an airport crowd.
Eventually he had accepted what everyone around him had insisted was obvious.
Claire had left him.
Now she was beneath his house.
Or rather beneath the mansion Ethan had inherited six months earlier from his late uncle, William Mercer.
“How long have you been down there?”
Claire shook her head.
“Not here.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask me that here.”
Ethan’s disbelief hardened into anger.
“You disappear for nine years, I find you under my floor, and you’re telling me where I’m allowed to ask questions?”
Claire flinched.
Not at his anger.
At something above him.
Her gaze had shifted toward the ceiling.
Ethan followed it.
A tiny red point glowed inside the chandelier housing.
A camera.
His stomach tightened.
He had never installed one.
Claire whispered, “He can see you.”
“Who?”
Her lips parted.
Then she deliberately looked at Lily.
And stopped herself.
That frightened Ethan more than any name could have.
Lily crawled closer.
“Were you crying before?”
Claire’s expression softened instantly.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
Claire closed her eyes.
When she opened them, tears had gathered again.
“Someone made a mistake.”
It was an odd answer.
Not someone hurt me.
Someone made a mistake.
Ethan noticed.
Before he could question it, Lily reached into the square opening.
“Can you come up?”
Claire moved suddenly.
“No!”
Lily jerked her hand back.
Claire immediately regretted frightening her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Lily.”
Ethan went still.
“You know her name.”
Claire realized too late what she had said.
The room seemed to contract around them.
Ethan had never introduced Lily.
Claire had disappeared almost two years before Lily was born.
“How do you know my daughter?”
Claire stared upward.
For several seconds she said nothing.
Then she whispered:
“I know what she wore on her first day of school.”
Ethan’s face changed.
Claire continued before he could speak.
“Yellow cardigan. Blue backpack. She cried because one of the butterfly clips fell out of her hair before you reached the classroom.”
Lily touched her braid unconsciously.
Ethan felt something colder than anger spreading through him.
That photograph had never been posted publicly.
He had taken it himself.
“How?”
Claire looked directly at him.
“Because someone has been sending me pictures of Lily since the day she was born.”
A soft electronic click sounded overhead.
The tiny red light inside the chandelier went dark.
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Ethan…”
“What?”
“The camera didn’t turn off.”
She backed away from the opening.
“It switched.”
“Switched to what?”
Claire stared toward the hallway Ethan had just searched.
“To the one behind you.”
This time Ethan turned.
High above the west-hall doorway, almost invisible inside the decorative molding, another lens slowly rotated toward Lily.
And taped beneath it was a tiny white envelope that had not been there thirty seconds earlier.
May you like
On the front, in handwriting Ethan recognized immediately, were three words:
FOR MY SON.
