Chapter 2
Emily had not heard Caleb’s name spoken aloud during the six weeks Ryan and Linda kept questioning her.
They always called him the Colonel’s friend.
That detail hurt James more than he expected.
Caleb Ward had served beside him in the Army before either man entered the world that eventually became the Bennett organization. He had stood beside James at his wife Sarah’s funeral. He had held Emily when she was sixteen and told her she would always have another father if James ever failed her.
Now his voice was coming from a recorder inside a room where Emily had been deprived of food until she answered questions.
James returned to the bedroom.
“What did they want?”
Emily looked at Ryan.
Ryan stared at the floor.
Linda answered instead.
“Something that belongs to the family.”
James looked at her.
“My daughter belongs to the family.”
Linda’s mouth tightened.
“She married my son.”
“And that made her yours?”
“No. It made her responsible for his future.”
Emily gave a small, exhausted laugh.
Linda turned toward her immediately.
“If you had answered the first time, none of this would have happened.”
James saw Emily flinch.
That sentence told him how often she had heard it.
He sat beside his daughter, careful not to touch the bruised areas of her arms.
“What were they asking?”
Emily swallowed.
“They kept asking about something called the Red Room.”
James’s expression changed.
Ryan noticed.
“So it exists.”
James looked at him.
Ryan immediately realized his mistake.
The Red Room was a name James had not heard in years.
Sarah had used it jokingly for a small reinforced chamber beneath the Bennett estate where she stored things she did not trust the rest of the family to see.
Almost nobody knew about it.
Caleb did.
Emily looked at her father.
“They said Mom told me how to get inside before she died.”
James felt the room narrow.
Sarah had died eight years earlier.
Emily had been sixteen.
“What did your mother tell you?”
Emily’s eyes filled.
“Nothing about a room.”
Then she paused.
“She only told me one strange thing.”
James waited.
May you like
Emily looked directly at him.
“She said if Caleb ever started asking about red walls, I was supposed to run to you.”
