Chapter 10 - Through the Servant’s Walls
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Inside the dark limestone belly of Whitaker Hall, Evan and Grace moved without a sound.
When Evan’s great-grandfather had built the mansion in 1912, he had constructed a narrow network of hidden cedar service passages behind the wainscoting so staff could tend the coal fireplaces and dumbwaiters in every room without ever being seen by the family’s guests. Most of the blueprints had been lost before the modern security renovations—meaning Arthur and Vanessa’s motion sensors only covered the main marble hallways and staircases.
Evan led the way up the spiral iron servants’ stair behind the kitchen chimney, his muddy flannel shirt stripped off, leaving him in a dark thermal undershirt that blended into the shadows.
"Two guards posted at the main second-floor landing," Grace whispered at his shoulder, peering through a carved ventilation grate near the ceiling of the grand gallery. "And the biometric door to the family wing is locked down from the central server room."
"They didn't wire the linen dumbwaiter behind the nursery," Evan whispered back, his jaw set like stone. "Clara and I used to hide Christmas presents in that shaft because it bypasses the hallway ceiling entirely."
Two minutes later, they reached the narrow oak landing inside the wall between the second and third floors. Evan braced his boots against the timber framing and hauled gently on the greased hemp counterweight rope until the wooden dumbwaiter car rose out of the darkness, stopping flush with the hidden panel behind the nursery’s walk-in closet.
Evan eased the cedar latch open a quarter of an inch.
Inside the sunny, pastel-painted nursery—where Caleb’s wooden train set still sat scattered across the rug—stood Dr. Julian Vane.
The elderly pediatrician wasn't alone. One of Arthur’s armed mercenaries stood by the hallway door with a suppressed submachine gun, while Dr. Vane hurriedly emptied rows of unlabeled liquid sedative bottles and syringe vials from a hidden compartment behind the changing table into a black leather medical bag.
Beside the medical bag on Sophie’s white desk sat the black laptop and wireless transmitter connected to the plastic baby monitor.
"Hurry up and pack that transmitter, Doc," the mercenary by the door muttered, checking the corridor through the glass transom. "Pendelton said Whitaker and the maid went into the greenhouse. The outdoor team is sweeping the woods now, and as soon as they drag him up here to the master study, we’re torching this wing to burn the DNA."
"I’m moving as fast as I can," Dr. Vane snapped nervously, snapping his leather medical bag shut. "Just make sure you wipe the hard drive on that voice-cloner before the fire marshals ever sift through the ashes."
Behind the closet door, Evan looked at Grace.
He didn't want the gun. He wanted his bare hands.
Grace nodded once, raising Marcus’s suppressed nine-millimeter pistol and aiming straight through the gap in the closet louver at the armed mercenary by the door.
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With a single muted pop, Grace put a non-lethal round straight through the mercenary’s right shoulder, spinning him off his feet into the drywall before she burst out of the closet and kicked his submachine gun across the hardwood floor, knocking him out cold with a swift strike to the carotid.
Dr. Julian Vane froze beside Sophie’s desk, his leather bag slipping from his soft, manicured hands as Evan Whitaker stepped slowly out of the dark closet behind him.
