Chapter 1
The brass key felt almost weightless in James Bennett’s hand.
Emily was still sitting on the edge of the bed with one arm wrapped protectively around her stomach when she pointed toward the locked door at the end of the hallway. Ryan lay beneath the tilted grandfather clock behind them, and Linda had gone completely pale.
“Tell me what that key opens,” James said.
Linda said nothing.
Emily did.
“That room.”
Her voice barely carried.
James crossed the hallway and pushed the key into the lock. Linda suddenly moved behind him, but two Bennett bodyguards stepped between them before she got within six feet of the door.
“James,” Linda said quickly. “You don’t understand what you’re about to see.”
He turned the key.
“I understand my pregnant daughter asked me to take her home.”
The lock opened.
The room beyond was not a nursery.
A straight-backed chair stood in the middle of the floor beneath a bright lamp. Emily’s phone sat broken on a dresser beside bottles of prenatal vitamins, unopened food, several folded maternity dresses, and the shoes James had watched her wear the last time she visited the Bennett estate.
A small camera faced the chair.
James stopped.
Emily closed her eyes behind him.
“They put me in there when I wouldn’t answer.”
James did not move for several seconds.
Then he noticed a recorder on the table.
He pressed play.
Ryan’s voice filled the room.
“Your father has a room beneath the Bennett house. Tell me how he opens it.”
Emily’s recorded voice was weak.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Linda answered next.
“Pregnancy doesn’t make you special. If you want dinner, answer the question.”
James slowly turned toward the hallway.
Linda looked away.
Then a third voice came through the recorder.
Older.
Calm.
Familiar.
“Don’t damage the baby. James will bend faster if both of them are still useful.”
James’s face became completely still.
He knew that voice.
May you like
He had trusted it for thirty years.
Caleb Ward.
