Chapter 7 - Room 1704

Firefighters reached us twelve minutes later.

By then, Lena was gone.

So was Caleb.

The guard swore he had been unconscious for less than thirty seconds when someone cut Caleb's restraints and took him through a service corridor.

Vanessa remained in Adrian's office.

Eleanor remained furious.

The rooftop party was evacuated without serious injury, but social media had already turned Vanessa's kick into a thousand looping clips.

None of that mattered to me.

I called my mother from the sidewalk.

She answered on the first ring.

"Mom, are you home?"

"Naomi? It's almost ten. What's wrong?"

"Did Dad ever use room seventeen-oh-four?"

Silence.

Not confusion.

Silence.

"Where did you hear that number?"

I closed my eyes.

"So it's real."

"Come home."

"Tell me now."

"Not on the phone."

I looked across the street at Eleanor Sterling, who was being guided into a black sedan.

"Mom, is this connected to the Sterlings?"

Another silence.

Then the line went dead.

Adrian drove me to Queens despite my objections. He had blood on his collar from a cut near his ear and ash on his white shirt.

"You don't have to play bodyguard," I said.

"I'm not. I'm playing lawyer with a strong interest in staying alive."

"That's new."

"Tonight has been educational."

My mother lived in the same narrow brick house where I grew up. The front door was open when we arrived.

I ran inside.

"Mom!"

No answer.

The living room had been searched. Couch cushions cut open. Drawers dumped. Family photos broken on the floor.

On the kitchen table sat one hotel key card.

STERLING GRAND - ROOM 1704.

Adrian picked up a framed photo from the floor.

It showed my father, Daniel Carter, twenty-five years younger, standing beside a man in a tuxedo.

I knew the second man.

Everyone in New York business knew him.

Thomas Sterling.

Vanessa's father.

On the back, written in my mother's handwriting, were four words:

THE NIGHT THEY CHOSE.

Then Adrian found a small digital recorder beneath the broken frame.

He pressed play.

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My mother's voice filled the kitchen.

"Naomi, if you're hearing this, they found me first. Do not call the police. Go to room seventeen-oh-four. And whatever Eleanor Sterling tells you... remember that she was there the night your father died."