Chapter 6 — The Other Half

Marta opened her mouth.

Before she could speak, the lamps went out.

The conservatory vanished into darkness.

I heard something strike the glass overhead.

Then the roof burst.

A hand caught my shoulder and dragged me down as shards hit the bench where I had been standing.

Sebastian landed beside me.

“Stay down.”

Another crack split the air.

Stone chipped from the planter above our heads.

Gunfire.

I pressed both hands over my head.

Sebastian pulled me behind the planter. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard him call for security.

Marta crouched beside the bench, reaching beneath it.

“My bag,” I said.

“I have it.”

She shoved the strap into my hand.

Sebastian raised his gun toward the far entrance.

I had seen the outline of it beneath his jacket earlier. Now the weapon seemed horrifyingly real.

A shape moved beyond the shattered doors.

He fired.

The figure dropped out of sight.

“Can you move?” he asked me.

I nodded because speaking felt impossible.

“Marta. Lower passage.”

She caught my wrist.

The same grip.

The same pressure.

I looked at her hand even as she pulled me toward the rear wall.

Behind the ivy stood a narrow door I hadn’t noticed. Marta opened it and pushed me through.

Steps descended into darkness.

“Hold the rail.”

I did.

Sebastian came after us, keeping his body between the stairwell and the conservatory.

Something struck the doorframe.

He made a short, harsh sound.

I turned.

“Keep moving,” he said.

Blood had appeared at his shoulder.

I saw it before Marta drew me down another step.

At the bottom, emergency lights cast a dull glow along a concrete corridor.

A steel door stood open at the far end.

A man waited beside it.

Gray suit.

Silver hair.

Adrian Vale.

Marta stopped so abruptly that I collided with her.

Vale raised his pistol.

“Hands where I can see them.”

Two men stepped from the room behind him.

One took Marta by the arm and pulled her away from me.

I reached for her.

The second man aimed at my chest.

I froze.

Sebastian descended the final steps.

He saw Vale, then the gun pointed at me.

His own weapon remained raised.

“Let her go.”

“Which one?” Vale asked.

His smile was exactly as patient as it had been at the gate.

Blood ran down Sebastian’s sleeve.

Vale glanced at it.

“You should have stayed upstairs.”

“Move the gun away from her.”

“Put yours on the floor.”

Sebastian didn’t.

Vale pressed his pistol against Marta’s chest.

Her face was pale, but she didn’t struggle.

“Sebastian,” she said quietly.

I looked between them.

He lowered his gun.

“On the floor,” Vale repeated.

Sebastian placed it on the concrete.

One of the men kicked it through the steel doorway.

Vale looked at me.

“Hello, Olivia.”

I held the backpack against my stomach.

“How did you get in?”

“Your friend’s house has more entrances than he likes to remember.”

Sebastian’s expression hardened.

“Who gave you the passage?”

Vale ignored him.

“The key.”

My fingers tightened around the strap.

“What key?”

“The brass one. Your mother gave it to you.”

Marta shut her eyes.

I kept my face still.

“It’s an old house key.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“She didn’t tell me anything.”

“Then she was cleverer than I gave her credit for.”

He looked toward the steel door.

“Bring them.”

The man beside me seized my upper arm.

I pulled away.

His grip tightened until I stopped.

Sebastian took a step.

Vale shifted his pistol toward me.

“No.”

Sebastian stood still.

I looked at the blood on his sleeve, then at Marta’s face.

Neither of them could help me without risking a shot.

“Don’t touch him,” I said.

Vale’s eyes returned to mine.

“That depends on you.”

We moved through the steel door.

Beyond it was a wider chamber with pipes running along the ceiling. At the far wall stood an old bank vault, its door set into reinforced stone.

I stared at it.

“Why is that here?”

“My father installed it,” Sebastian said.

Vale glanced back.

“Your father had a useful habit of hiding things beneath things.”

A narrow desk sat near the vault. On its surface were a keypad and a brass slot.

I could see the shape of the slot from where I stood.

My stomach dropped.

Vale noticed.

“There. You recognize it.”

“I’ve never been here.”

“But you have the key.”

One of his men pulled at my backpack.

I clutched it harder.

“Let me open it.”

The man looked at Vale.

Vale nodded.

I lowered the bag slowly.

The key was in the inner pocket, wrapped in the edge of my mother’s photograph.

My fingers found the photograph first.

I wanted to keep it from him.

I wanted, absurdly, to keep one part of her untouched.

I withdrew the key and left the picture inside.

Vale’s breath changed.

For the first time, he looked impatient.

“Twenty years,” he said.

I held the key in my closed hand.

“What does it open?”

“You’re looking at it.”

“What’s inside?”

“Access your mother had no right to take.”

Sebastian spoke.

“She took records of what you stole.”

Vale turned toward him.

“Careful.”

“You’re standing in my house with a gun against a woman who’s done nothing to you.”

“Your father understood the value of silence. You never did.”

“My father understood the value of being paid.”

Vale’s smile disappeared.

Marta looked at Sebastian.

“Stop.”

He didn’t.

“You’ve spent twenty years chasing something Evelyn kept from you. You still don’t know what she did with it.”

The shot was deafening in the enclosed chamber.

Sebastian dropped against the wall.

I screamed.

For a moment, I thought Vale had shot him again.

Then I saw the fresh hole in the stone beside his head and the broken fragments on the floor.

Sebastian pressed a hand to his side.

Blood spread between his fingers.

The bullet had struck the wall close enough to tear it apart against him.

Vale raised the pistol again.

“The next one goes through him.”

I moved toward Sebastian.

The guard caught my arm.

“Let me go!”

Sebastian lifted his head.

“Olivia. Don’t.”

His voice had lost its steadiness.

I looked at Vale.

“I have the key. Stop shooting.”

“Then use it.”

Marta shook her head.

“Olivia—”

“I’m not watching him die.”

I crossed to the desk.

The brass key slid into the slot.

For twenty years, I had wondered whether it belonged to a door in a house we once lived in. I had carried it through foster homes, college, cheap apartments, and the life Ethan had packed into a bag.

Now it turned with a soft click.

The keypad lit.

VOICE VERIFICATION REQUIRED.

I stared at the words.

“It needs my mother.”

Vale came closer.

“No. It needs what she taught you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The key contains one half of the access cipher. She left the other half with you.”

“I was eight.”

“Children remember things adults stop listening to.”

Behind him, Marta had begun to cry.

Silently.

That frightened me more than the gun.

I looked back at the screen.

A memory surfaced without warning.

A yellow blanket.

My mother’s palm against my forehead.

A tune I had heard when I was frightened, when I was sick, when thunder woke me in the middle of the night.

Sleep, little star.

I gripped the edge of the desk.

Another fragment followed.

Smoke.

My mother’s voice shaking while she tried to keep singing.

Morning always finds us.

Vale saw something change in my face.

He stepped beside me and lifted the pistol toward Sebastian.

“There it is,” he said.

“Now sing.”