Chapter 2 - The Girl Behind the Portrait
I dropped the axe and lunged toward the opening.
Two security guards moved at the same time.
One seized my arm.
The second tried to place himself between me and the wall.
“Don't touch her,” I shouted.
The child's fingers curled around the broken edge of the plaster.
Her nails were cracked.
Her skin was gray with dust.
“Please don't leave me.”
The words destroyed whatever restraint I had left.
I drove my heel down on the guard's shoe and ripped myself free.
Then I grabbed the edge of the damaged wall with both hands.
The plaster shifted.
A narrow wooden panel appeared beneath it.
Someone had built a hidden door directly behind the portrait.
“This is private property,” Sebastian said.
I looked over my shoulder.
“You have a child locked inside your wall.”
His wife, Margaret Vale, stepped toward him.
She was wearing a diamond necklace worth more than most people made in twenty lifetimes.
For the first time that evening, her elegant face looked genuinely frightened.
“Sebastian.”
He did not look at her.
“Security, escort Miss Hart outside.”
The security chief hesitated.
That hesitation told me more than an order ever could.
He had heard the child too.
Everyone had.
“You remove me before opening this wall,” I shouted, “and every phone in this hallway will record you doing it.”
That changed everything.
Dozens of guests suddenly remembered the devices in their hands.
Screens rose.
Cameras began recording.
Sebastian's jaw tightened.
I shoved my fingers into the broken panel and pulled.
The wood groaned.
The hidden door opened several inches.
A smell escaped from the darkness.
Sweat.
Dust.
Disinfectant.
Fear.
I pulled harder.
The opening widened.
Inside was a narrow room barely larger than a closet.
A mattress lay on the floor.
Plastic water bottles were stacked against one wall.
A bucket stood in the corner.
And sitting on the mattress was a little girl.
She could not have been older than eight.
Her dark hair had been cut unevenly near her chin.
She wore an oversized gray sweatshirt and no shoes.
A plastic hospital bracelet was still fastened around her wrist.
The moment she saw me, she began to cry.
I climbed through the opening and wrapped my arms around her.
“You're safe.”
She shook violently against me.
“No.”
Her voice was almost silent.
“No, I'm not.”
I looked at the bracelet.
There was a faded name beneath the barcode.
LUCY BENNETT.
My blood turned cold.
I knew that name.
Everyone in the city did.
Lucy Bennett had disappeared eleven months earlier.
Her photograph had been on buses, billboards, news broadcasts, and police websites.
The Vale Foundation had donated two million dollars to the search.
Sebastian Vale himself had stood beside Lucy's mother at a press conference and promised to bring her daughter home.
I carried Lucy out through the broken wall.
The corridor erupted.
Several guests started shouting.
One woman began crying.
A journalist attending the gala pushed toward us.
Sebastian remained perfectly still.
Lucy saw him.
Her entire body went rigid.
Then she buried her face against my shoulder.
“He comes at night.”
May you like
The cameras captured every word.
Sebastian's face went white.
