Chapter 5 - Trapped
Claire ran to the door and yanked the handle.
It did not move.
“Richard!” she shouted. “Open this door!”
No answer.
Leo stared at the printer.
Another sheet came out.
USE THE FLOOR.
He looked down.
“What does that mean?” Claire asked.
Leo scanned the room.
Grandpa had never written instructions without a reason. Every clue connected to something he had taught Leo during their weekends together.
Maps hide what walls reveal.
Clocks hide what people forget.
And old houses breathe through the floor.
Leo dropped to his knees and pulled back the rug.
A brass ring was set into one floorboard.
He lifted it.
A square hatch opened beneath them.
“Of course,” Claire whispered.
A narrow ladder descended into darkness.
Someone pounded on the blue-room door from the hallway.
Martin Pike called out, calm as ever.
“Claire, unlock the door. We can settle this without frightening Leo.”
Claire laughed once, bitterly.
“You drugged my father.”
Silence.
Then Richard spoke.
“You don’t understand what Dad was doing to this family.”
“You stole thirty-eight million dollars!”
“I built that company too!”
“You forged medical records.”
“He was going to destroy everything!”
The door shuddered under a heavy impact.
Leo climbed into the hatch.
Claire followed and pulled it closed above them.
They descended into a stone tunnel beneath the mansion.
At the bottom, Leo turned on his phone flashlight.
The tunnel split in two.
One path led toward the old wine cellar.
The other sloped toward the lake.
Claire pointed to faint chalk marks on the wall.
An H.
Then an arrow.
They followed it.
Behind them, wood cracked above.
Richard had entered the blue room.
Leo and Claire hurried through the tunnel until they reached a steel door.
The brass key fit.
Leo turned it.
The door opened onto a small underground workshop lit by battery lamps.
A cot stood in the corner.
A half-empty coffee mug rested on a table.
Someone had been there minutes ago.
Claire saw a bloodstained bandage in a trash bin.
“Dad?” she whispered.
A radio on the workbench crackled to life.
May you like
Then Henry Mercer’s voice came through.
“Claire, take Leo and get out of the house. Richard has a gun.”
