Chapter 11 - The Second Device
The panic room was supposed to be the safest place in my house.
It had steel walls, independent air, two encrypted phones, medical supplies, and a door thick enough to stop rifle fire.
Someone had drilled through one ventilation duct and inserted a second device from the service corridor.
It was smaller than the first.
And it was not a speaker.
"Signal repeater," Marco said. "It copies keypad traffic."
"They can open the panic room?"
"Not yet. But they were trying to steal the access sequence."
I looked through the glass partition at the three babies sleeping in my office under Elena's watch.
"Why trigger the nursery first?"
Marco understood before he answered.
"To force you to move the babies here."
The first device had never been about hurting them.
It had been bait.
Someone wanted us to use the panic room enough times for the second device to learn how we opened it.
"Wednesday - fire response," I said.
Marco nodded. "Fire means evacuation. Evacuation means panic room."
The plan was suddenly clear.
Create a fire.
Scare the household.
Move the triplets into the supposedly secure room.
Then open it from the outside.
"They're not trying to kill the children," Luca said from the doorway.
"No."
I looked at him.
"They're trying to take them."
A kidnapping would trigger trust clauses, emergency control, ransom pressure, public panic, and a financial collapse our enemies could use.
Or worse.
My children could become leverage for the rest of my life.
Marco removed the second device and replaced it with a dummy.
"We can use this."
"How?"
"Let them believe the plan is still alive."
Luca shook his head. "You want to wait for someone to set a fire around three babies?"
"No," I said. "I want them to believe they did."
By sunrise, we built a trap.
The babies were moved to a secure apartment across town with Elena, Sophie, Dr. Gable, and six people I trusted with my life.
At the house, we left three weighted bassinets in the panic room. We kept normal staff movement. We restored the nursery camera loop.
Then we waited.
At 8:43 p.m. Wednesday, the kitchen smoke alarm sounded.
Exactly as the schedule predicted.
White smoke poured from a service pantry.
Staff evacuated on cue.
Marco shouted fake orders over the radio.
I carried one empty bassinet toward the panic room while hidden cameras recorded every hallway.
The steel door closed.
Thirty seconds passed.
A minute.
Then the keypad outside lit by itself.
Four numbers appeared.
The lock clicked.
The door opened.
A man in a fire department jacket stepped inside.
Behind him came a woman wearing a respirator mask.
Marco's men closed in from both sides.
"Hands where I can see them!"
The man reached for his waist.
He never got there.
Marco slammed him against the wall.
The woman ran.
I caught her at the stairwell.
She struggled once, then froze when I pulled the mask from her face.
I knew her.
Everyone in the house knew her.
May you like
Monica Lane.
One of my children's nannies.
