Chapter 3 - The Yellow Bow
For one full second, nobody moved.
Then Dominic crossed the corridor so fast the officer backed into the wall.
"Say that again."
"Mrs. Cole says Lily was with her in the library. The lights cut out for maybe twenty seconds. When they came back, the terrace door was open."
Dominic released Vivian and grabbed the officer's radio.
"Lock the property. Nobody leaves. Nobody enters. Check every vehicle, every service gate, every camera."
Marcus was already speaking into his own radio.
Vivian stepped out of the storage room.
Dominic rounded on her.
"You said Lily dies if you talked. Did you arrange this?"
"No."
"Did Cross?"
"I don't know."
"Then you're useless."
Vivian flinched, but she did not retreat.
"The last message said I had until midnight."
Dominic checked the time.
11:54.
Six minutes.
They reached the library together.
Mrs. Cole, Lily's sixty-year-old governess, stood near the open terrace doors crying into one hand.
Rain swept across the stone outside.
A yellow ribbon lay on the floor beside the threshold.
Dominic bent and picked it up.
Lily's bow.
The clip was still attached.
There was no blood.
No torn fabric.
No sign of a struggle.
"Show me the cameras," Dominic said.
Marcus pulled up the nearest feed on a tablet.
The hallway camera showed Mrs. Cole and Lily entering the library at 11:51.
At 11:52:13, the image froze.
At 11:52:34, it resumed.
The terrace door was open.
Lily was gone.
"Twenty-one seconds," Marcus said.
"Nobody carries a four-year-old across that terrace and disappears in twenty-one seconds without being seen," Dominic replied.
Vivian looked at the floor.
"Unless she walked willingly."
Dominic's eyes cut to her.
Vivian pointed to the ribbon.
"Lily hates when anyone touches her hair. If a stranger grabbed her, the bow might come off, but she'd scream. Mrs. Cole heard nothing."
Mrs. Cole nodded through tears.
"Nothing. I swear."
Before stepping into the rain, Dominic questioned Mrs. Cole without raising his voice.
He had learned years ago that frightened people remembered less when they felt accused.
"Tell me exactly what Lily was doing before the lights went out."
Mrs. Cole wiped her eyes.
"She was drawing. She said Aunt Vivian had been sneaking."
Vivian looked up.
"She said that?"
Mrs. Cole nodded.
"I thought she meant a game."
Dominic asked, "What was she drawing?"
Mrs. Cole pointed toward a low table.
A page of yellow construction paper lay beneath several crayons.
Lily had drawn the villa as a large square with too many windows.
Beside it she had drawn a black rectangle and three stick figures.
One had brown hair.
One had dark hair.
The smallest figure wore a yellow triangle dress.
Above the black rectangle, Lily had made a gray line leading toward a second building.
Marcus studied it.
"Could be the service corridor."
Vivian crouched beside the page.
"Or the tunnel."
Dominic looked at her.
"What tunnel?"
"I don't know. I'm looking at a four-year-old's drawing."
Mrs. Cole remembered something else.
"Lily asked me why the floor was talking."
Dominic frowned.
"When?"
"After dinner. Near the greenhouse hall. She said she heard a man's voice under the floor."
Marcus's expression changed.
"There are utility conduits beneath that section. Sound could carry through them."
Dominic folded the drawing carefully and slipped it inside his jacket.
His daughter had noticed whispers beneath the floor before any adult noticed a breach above it.
He felt pride and guilt arrive together.
He had surrounded Lily with cameras, guards, alarms, and rules, then failed to ask what she herself was seeing.
The thought followed him toward the terrace doors as the rain blew inward.
Dominic moved onto the terrace.
Rain darkened his suit immediately.
The lawn stretched toward a line of cypress trees and the eastern guesthouse.
Security lights flooded the property bright as afternoon.
No one ran across the grass.
No vehicle moved.
A guard shouted from the far gate that it was clear.
Then Dominic saw something beside the terrace steps.
A small wet footprint.
Then another.
Child-size.
They led not toward the lawn but along the covered wall to the greenhouse corridor.
Dominic followed.
Vivian and Marcus came behind him.
The prints stopped at a locked maintenance door.
Dominic tried the handle.
Locked.
Marcus reached for his key ring.
Vivian grabbed his arm.
"Wait."
Marcus stared at her hand.
"Move."
"If someone wants him to open it, don't make it easy."
Dominic knelt beside the door.
A tiny folded square of yellow paper had been pushed beneath it.
He opened it.
Three words were written in black marker.
DADDY, LOOK UP.
Dominic lifted his head.
A small security camera sat above the corridor.
Its red indicator was off.
Vivian whispered, "That's not Lily's handwriting."
"Obviously."
"No. Look at the D."
Dominic looked again.
The letters were block capitals, uneven and heavy.
"What about it?"
Vivian's face changed.
"Adrian writes his D like that. Straight spine. Double curve. He did it on every note in college."
Marcus scoffed.
"You're identifying a grown man from three block letters?"
"I'm identifying someone who wants us to think of him."
Dominic stood.
"Open the door."
Marcus inserted the key.
The maintenance room beyond was empty.
A single children's chair sat under a bright work light.
On the chair was Lily's white shoe.
Dominic stopped at the threshold.
His breathing remained steady, but his right hand trembled once.
Vivian saw it.
She touched his arm.
"Dom."
He pulled away.
On the far wall, a small monitor switched on by itself.
Static cleared.
A live camera feed appeared.
Lily sat in a brightly lit room wearing her yellow dress and one shoe.
She looked unharmed.
She held a juice box with both hands.
Someone off camera said, "Wave to Daddy."
Lily frowned.
"I don't want to."
Dominic stepped toward the screen.
"Lily."
She could not hear him.
The camera angle widened just enough to show a man's sleeve, dark gray, then a hand placing a phone on the table.
The man stayed outside frame.
A distorted voice filled the maintenance room.
"Midnight, Dominic. The envelope for the girl."
Dominic looked at the wall clock.
11:56.
"B-seventeen is empty," Vivian whispered.
The voice continued.
"If the envelope is missing, ask the man who keeps your cameras."
Everyone looked at Marcus.
Marcus's face lost color.
"This is a setup."
The screen went black.
May you like
Dominic turned slowly toward him.
"You have four minutes to convince me."
