Chapter 2 - Six Seconds of Darkness
“Lily!” Ethan vaulted over a chair.
Claire rose too fast and pain pulled low across her abdomen. She caught the table with one hand.
“Don’t run,” Ethan said, already scanning the room. “Stay here.”
“I’m not staying anywhere.”
The emergency lights painted the ballroom red. Guests crowded the doors, security guards shouted into radios, and the polished room that had looked elegant thirty seconds earlier suddenly felt like a trap.
Victoria stood exactly where Ethan had left her.
Too calm.
“Where is she?” Claire demanded.
Victoria’s eyebrows lifted. “You think I took a child in front of two hundred people?”
“I think six seconds is a long time when you’ve planned for it.”
Ethan turned. “Enough. Security footage. Now.”
The head of security, Mason Reed, hurried over. “Main cameras dropped with the power.”
“All of them?”
“Ballroom feed, west hall, service corridor.”
Claire stared at him. “Convenient.”
Mason looked offended. “Mrs. Whitmore, this system has three backups.”
“Then show me one.”
They pushed through the panicked crowd toward the security office. Halfway there, Claire spotted something beneath a chair.
A burgundy ribbon.
Lily had worn one around her waist.
Claire picked it up.
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “She came this way.”
They followed the corridor past the kitchens. A waiter said he had seen a little girl near the service elevator. Another swore he had heard someone say, “Your dad is waiting downstairs.”
“Her father is dead,” Claire said.
Ethan froze.
Lily’s father—Ethan’s younger brother Michael—had died eleven months after Anna. A highway collision. Another tragedy the family rarely discussed.
Claire suddenly hated that word.
Tragedy.
It was what rich families called things they didn’t want examined too closely.
The service elevator opened.
Empty.
On the floor lay Lily’s small gold shoe.
Ethan picked it up with shaking fingers.
Behind them, Victoria said, “This is getting out of control.”
Ethan turned so slowly it made Claire nervous.
“Getting?” he asked.
Victoria held his stare. “Call the police.”
“Already done.”
For the first time, Victoria looked surprised.
Mason appeared with a tablet. “I found something.”
He played a backup clip from a loading-dock camera that had stayed online.
At 8:43 p.m., six seconds after the blackout, a man in a catering jacket carried Lily through the service exit.
Her body looked limp.
Claire covered her mouth.
Ethan leaned toward the screen. “Zoom in.”
The picture sharpened.
The man turned just enough for the camera to catch his face.
Claire knew him.
May you like
She had seen him three years ago at the lake estate, standing outside Anna’s bedroom.
And according to the Whitmore family, that man had been dead for two years.
