Chapter 1: Three Knocks at 12:03

At 12:03 a.m., someone knocked three times on my bedroom door.

No one knocked on that door. The staff had a private line. My security chief had a radio. The men who wanted to kill me usually tried the gates first.

I opened it with a pistol in my hand.

A little girl stood on the other side, barefoot on the marble, clutching a stuffed rabbit by one ear. Her pale blue nightgown was twisted around her knees. She looked at the gun, then at my face.

“Mr. Roman,” she whispered, “the bad man found us.”

I put the pistol behind my back.

Maisie Ellis was three years old. Her mother worked in the east wing of my house, and until that moment, the most she had ever said to me was “Good morning.” Now she had crossed half the estate alone.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She won’t wake up.”

I stepped into the hall. Maisie caught my hand before I could move past her.

“I tried,” she said. “I said her name really loud.”

I knelt so she could see my face. “You did the right thing coming here. Show me.”

She took two of my fingers. Her grip was so small that I was afraid of pulling too hard.

The east wing was quiet. Two wall lamps burned above the long corridor, and the windows beyond them were black. Maisie kept close to my leg. Twice she glanced over her shoulder.

“Did you see the man?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Mommy said if he came, I had to hide.”

“Did you hear him?”

“He said he knew where Bunny was.”

I looked at the rabbit pressed to her chest. One ear had been sewn back on with blue thread.

At Nora Ellis’s apartment, the door stood open.

“Nora?”

No answer.

She lay between the dresser and the bed, one arm trapped beneath her. A drinking glass had shattered near the wall. I crossed the room, checked her breathing, and felt for a pulse. It was quick and uneven. Her skin was cold.

I called the medical team that served the estate, then security.

“Caleb,” I said when my security chief answered, “lock the gates. Check every exit. Nora Ellis is unconscious, and someone may have entered the east wing.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Keep your men out of this room until I say otherwise. Maisie is here.”

I ended the call and found a blanket for Nora. Maisie had stopped at the threshold.

“Is she dead?”

“No.” I had her pulse beneath my fingers. “She’s breathing. A doctor is coming.”

Maisie edged closer but would not let go of the rabbit. I lifted the blanket over Nora’s shoulders and noticed a small red mark high on the back of her left arm.

It might have been nothing. In my house, at this hour, I no longer believed in nothing.

A man in a black suit appeared at the open door. It was Ellis, one of the night guards.

“Mr. Vescari. Mr. Ward sent me to secure the corridor.”

“Were you posted here at eleven?”

“No, sir. West gate.”

“Who was?”

“Ward handles the assignments.”

“Then stay where I can see you.”

He took one step back. Maisie pressed against my side.

Dr. Peter Hale arrived fourteen minutes later with a nurse and two medical bags. He examined Nora while I took Maisie to the far end of the room. She watched his hands the entire time.

Peter started fluids and checked the mark on Nora’s arm. He asked what had happened before she collapsed.

“Maisie says Nora came home with a headache,” I told him. “She heard a crash and found her on the floor.”

Peter looked up. “Did she take anything?”

“I don’t know.”

His expression changed. He asked the nurse to stay with Nora and drew me into the hallway.

“She needs hospital observation,” he said. “Her blood pressure is low. She’s severely dehydrated, and I’m concerned about a drug exposure.”

“What drug?”

“I can’t identify it here. That puncture mark is recent. Tell the hospital exactly when she was found.”

“Could it have been prescribed?”

“Ask her when she wakes. For now, don’t assume she chose to take it.”

Through the doorway, I could see Maisie standing beside the bed. She held one of Nora’s fingers in her free hand.

My phone rang. Caleb.

“The cameras on the staff corridor went out at eleven forty-one,” he said. “Six minutes. We’re checking the system.”

“An outage?”

“The other cameras kept recording.”

“Who can disable that corridor?”

“Security. A few maintenance staff.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

I watched Ellis at the end of the hall. He was studying the floor, but I had been watching him long enough to know he could hear every word.

“Find out who used the controls,” I said.

“I will.”

Peter called me back into the room. Nora’s eyes had opened.

She searched the ceiling first. Then she saw Maisie and tried to sit up.

“Stay down,” Peter told her.

Nora pulled her daughter close. “Did he touch you?”

Maisie shook her head.

Nora looked at me. Eight months in my house, and I had never seen fear strip the careful politeness from her face.

“You have to get her out of here,” she said.

“Who hurt you?”

Her gaze flicked toward the guard in the corridor. I shut the door.

“Gideon Shaw?” I asked.

Gideon had sat across a conference table from me three days earlier, smiling while he denied moving money from our harbor project. Nora’s face told me I had guessed correctly.

“He found us,” she said.

“How did he get through the gate?”

“He didn’t.”

Peter glanced at the door.

Nora tightened her arms around Maisie. “Someone here let him know where I was.”

Maisie tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “Mommy, he wanted Bunny.”

Nora went still. “Don’t—”

Maisie opened the crooked seam along the rabbit’s back. A small black flash drive slipped out and struck the floor.

I picked it up. “What is this?”

Nora’s eyes filled with tears, but her voice held steady.

“The reason my brother died.”

The lamps went out.

For an instant, the room disappeared. Then three gunshots cracked from downstairs, close enough to send Maisie under the bed.

My phone lit up with Caleb’s call.

“Roman,” he said, breathing hard, “stay away from the east stairwell. We have an intruder.”

I backed toward Nora’s bed. Peter raised his phone for light. In its narrow beam, the door handle turned.

Maisie peered out from beneath the bed.

“That’s not the bad man,” she whispered.

The door opened. Caleb Ward stood in the darkness, a pistol in his hand.

“No,” Maisie said. “That is.”

Caleb’s gaze went from her to the flash drive in my fist.

“Give it to me, Roman.”

I moved between him and the child.

Then I saw where he was aiming.