Chapter 12 - THE TUNNEL UNDER THE HOUSE
The service vent led to something I had forgotten existed.
An old delivery tunnel built under the estate during Prohibition.
My grandfather used it to move liquor.
My father used it to move whatever he did not want seen.
The tunnel ended beyond the east wall near a maintenance road.
Fresh tire tracks cut through the mud.
That explained more than Lily's kidnapping.
It explained how the cake attacker bypassed security.
"These routes aren't in our current plans."
"Who knew?"
"Old estate staff. Family."
"Martin?"
"He managed renovations ten years ago."
Torres found a dropped phone halfway down the tunnel.
Evan Rusk's.
Messages connected him directly to Martin.
One read:
CHILD WITNESS. QUIETLY. NO HARM UNLESS NECESSARY.
Sophia saw the screen.
"No harm?"
Her voice was so flat it scared me.
I had spent my life believing power meant people did what you said.
Sophia reminded me that power also meant someone could decide your child was "necessary."
Rusk was arrested the next day at a motel.
He confessed to entering the cold room.
He claimed he did not know Ethan would die.
"You rubbed a known allergen into a child's food."
"Martin said it would make him sick."
Rusk also admitted abducting Lily to scare her into silence.
He planned to leave her in a storage room and create a story that she had wandered away.
"Why the silver case?"
"Martin gave it to me."
"Why Elena's?"
"To point at family."
"Why Luca's ring?"
"Same reason."
"Where is Martin?"
"Gone."
Then Torres placed an offshore transfer in front of him.
Martin had wired money to an account in Montreal.
Rusk gave us a private airfield.
We were too late.
The jet was gone.
Destination filed as Halifax.
But the pilot's phone pinged somewhere else.
Northern Vermont.
Near a Moretti lodge that had been closed since Elena died.
I knew that lodge.
Elena and I spent our first anniversary there.
And three days before her crash, she had driven there alone.
May you like
"Why?"
"I think she hid something."
