Chapter 2 - The Man Beneath the Kitchen
Adrian stood so quickly he nearly struck his head on the dumbwaiter frame.
“Who’s downstairs?”
Rachel recoiled.
“No.”
“What?”
“Don’t leave Noah.”
The boy had wrapped both arms around her. Rachel winced from the pressure but refused to let him go.
Adrian stared at the kitchen’s basement door.
The Mercer mansion had been built in 1912 and renovated repeatedly by three generations of his family. Adrian knew its wine cellar, mechanical rooms, laundry corridor, old servants’ quarters, and storage vault.
But his father had always controlled the renovations.
“Rachel, who else is here?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
That answer frightened him more than a name would have.
Adrian locked the kitchen door and called 911.
Then he called his security chief, Daniel Ruiz.
“Get here now. Bring two men you trust personally. Nobody else.”
Rachel caught his wrist.
“No company security.”
Adrian frowned.
“Why?”
“Victor hired half of them.”
Before Adrian could answer, footsteps sounded below.
Slow.
Measured.
Coming toward the basement staircase.
Adrian grabbed a fireplace poker.
“Noah, behind me.”
Rachel whispered, “Turn off the lights.”
He obeyed.
Darkness swallowed the kitchen.
A thin blade of light appeared beneath the basement door.
The knob turned.
Adrian raised the poker.
The door opened.
A man stepped through.
Adrian swung.
“Jesus!”
The stranger ducked.
“Mr. Mercer!”
Adrian stopped.
The man was elderly, perhaps seventy, wearing an old maintenance jacket.
Rachel made a strangled sound.
“Walter?”
Walter Greene had worked for Charles Mercer for twenty-three years before abruptly retiring two years earlier.
Adrian lowered the poker.
“What are you doing in my basement?”
Walter stared at Rachel.
His face crumpled.
“My God.”
Rachel tried to stand.
“You knew.”
Walter shook his head.
“I knew there was a room. I didn’t know they put you in it.”
Adrian stepped between them.
“What room?”
Walter looked toward the basement.
“The original service passage.”
“You’re telling me my house has rooms I don’t know about?”
“Your father made sure you didn’t.”
Police sirens approached.
Rachel panicked.
“No uniforms in the basement.”
Adrian looked at her.
“They need to search.”
“No.”
“Rachel—”
“Martin can reach the department.”
Martin Shaw was the Mercer family’s outside counsel and had represented the company for twenty-seven years.
Adrian had known him since childhood.
“That’s impossible.”
Rachel laughed once.
It sounded almost painful.
“Is that what you’re going to keep saying tonight?”
The first officers arrived minutes later.
Adrian allowed paramedics inside but told police that his wife had been discovered in an old service shaft and needed immediate medical attention.
Rachel refused transport until Noah was allowed in the ambulance.
As paramedics examined bruising around her wrists, Adrian quietly placed the digital recorder inside his coat rather than surrendering it.
A detective approached.
Detective Lena Brooks, forty-one, Philadelphia Police Department.
She had handled Rachel’s disappearance from the beginning.
“You found her?”
“My son did.”
Brooks studied Victor’s empty place near the door.
“Where is your brother?”
“He ran.”
That changed her expression.
“Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Brooks looked at Noah’s swollen cheek.
“Did Victor do that?”
Adrian nodded.
“Then we’re looking for him.”
Walter had disappeared.
Adrian realized it only when officers searched the kitchen.
“Where’s the older man?”
“What older man?” Brooks asked.
Adrian ran to the basement.
Walter was gone.
But the basement door at the bottom of the stairs stood open.
It led into the old wine cellar.
Behind a rack of Burgundy bottles, Adrian found something he had never seen before.
Fresh scratches on the floor.
He pulled the rack.
It moved.
Behind it was a narrow passage.
Detective Brooks appeared beside him.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Adrian said nothing.
She shone her flashlight inside.
The passage extended beneath the house.
At its entrance lay a plastic medical tray.
Empty syringes.
Bottles of electrolyte solution.
Sedatives.
Rachel had not merely been hiding.
She had been imprisoned.
Brooks crouched.
“There’s blood.”
Adrian’s stomach tightened.
“Rachel’s?”
“We’ll test it.”
A second officer called from deeper inside.
“Detective?”
They followed.
Twenty feet down the passage, they reached a reinforced steel door.
The brass service key opened it.
Inside was a six-by-eight-foot room.
A mattress.
A bucket.
Bottled water.
A chain fixed to the wall.
Adrian had to turn away.
Brooks remained professional, but her jaw tightened.
On the wall Rachel had scratched lines into the plaster.
Thirty-seven marks.
One for every day she had been missing.
Beside them she had written names.
VICTOR.
MARTIN.
C.M.
The last initials stopped Adrian.
Charles Mercer.
His father.
Brooks looked at him.
“C.M.?”
Adrian swallowed.
“My father.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He is.”
Brooks shone the flashlight lower.
Beneath the initials Rachel had scratched another message.
HE STARTED IT BEFORE HE DIED.
Adrian felt the recorder inside his coat.
His phone rang.
Martin Shaw.
Adrian stared at the screen.
Brooks noticed.
“Answer it.”
Adrian pressed speaker.
“Martin.”
The attorney sounded calm.
“I heard Rachel was found.”
Adrian exchanged a look with Brooks.
The discovery had happened less than twenty minutes earlier.
It had not reached the media.
“How did you hear that?”
A pause.
Then Martin said quietly:
“Adrian, whatever Rachel tells you tonight, remember that severe isolation can cause confusion.”
Adrian’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“You knew.”
“Come to my office before you make accusations.”
“Victor assaulted my son and fled.”
Another pause.
Martin’s voice became lower.
“Then Victor has made a catastrophic mistake.”
“You’re going to tell me everything.”
“I will tell you what your father was trying to protect.”
“What was he protecting?”
Martin exhaled.
“Your company.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“You imprisoned my wife for a company?”
“No.”
May you like
Martin’s next words erased what little certainty Adrian still possessed.
“Rachel was imprisoned because she discovered Mercer Urban Holdings does not belong to you.”
