Chapter 2 - The Floor That Didn't Exist
Nico read the message twice, then turned his phone face down.
"Dahlia, do not tell anyone where the child is. Not the front desk. Not the doorman. Especially not Gideon."
"Your brother?" she asked.
"My brother has just made himself my first suspect."
Sophie was watching them. Adults underestimated children. He wouldn't.
He crouched beside her chair. "I need you to stay with Dahlia for a little while."
"Are you going to find Mommy?"
"I'm going to find out where they took her."
"That's not the same thing."
No, he thought. It wasn't.
"You're right. I'm going to do everything I can to bring her back."
Dahlia called a woman named Tessa from her private staff, someone who had cared for her nieces and understood when not to ask questions. Tessa brought water and a blanket. Sophie let her sit nearby.
Nico and Dahlia took the private stairs down ten levels. Upstairs smelled of candles; downstairs of bleach. Machinery rattled behind a wall.
"B2 has no active elevators on the public control panel," Dahlia said as she tapped her tablet. "Somebody overrode the software nine months ago."
"Who signed off?"
"Facilities. Gideon's department."
The stairwell ended at a door painted concrete gray. Nico pressed his old master key to the reader. A red light blinked.
"That key should open every door in the building," he said.
"Someone changed the permissions."
Dahlia pulled a small tool from her pocket and opened the panel beneath the reader. Nico listened as she worked. Twice he heard footsteps on the other side. Once he heard what sounded like a wheel catching against a metal seam.
The lock clicked.
They entered a hallway lined with dead fluorescent lights. A white laundry sheet lay in a heap near the wall. On the floor beneath it was a child's handmade blue bracelet, snapped at the knot.
Nico picked it up carefully.
"Mara was here," he said.
Dahlia aimed her flashlight at the far wall. A fresh scratch crossed the paint beside an enormous steel door marked OUT OF SERVICE.
"Someone dragged something heavy through there," she whispered.
Nico tested the handle. Locked. He put his shoulder against it once, hard enough to make the hinge complain. It didn't move.
His phone vibrated again.
A video appeared from an unknown number. Mara Reed sat tied to a chair, a bruise swelling along her jaw. She looked straight into the camera.
"Mr. Rivas," she said, voice shaking, "you need to listen to me. This isn't about your hotel. It's about the people who disappeared from it."
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The recording cut to black.
Then an electronic voice said, "You have until sunrise to trade the girl for her mother."
