"He Spent Millions on Doctors. Then He Caught His Maid Doing This for His Dying Mother."

"Go, go, go!" Clara urged, crawling headfirst into the pitch-black pipe.

I followed right behind her, splashing through ankle-deep runoff water, the concrete ceiling pressing down claustrophobically close above our heads. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth, rust, and old memories.

After what felt like an eternity of crawling through the dark, we reached a heavy steel access hatch fitted with a digital keypad.

"The basement panic room entry," Clara panted, wiping mud and sweat from her forehead. She reached into the lining of her wet jacket and pulled out a small, waterproof circuit board wired with alligator clips. "Julian taught me how to bypass these security panels using a signal repeater."

She clipped the wires onto the keypad's motherboard. A series of tiny green lights blinked rapidly, followed by a sharp, electronic chime.

Click.

The heavy steel door swung inward, releasing a wave of warm, dry air from inside the mansion.

We tumbled out onto the polished concrete floor of the mansion's lower-level utility corridor. We were inside.

"We need to get to the east wing before Julian reaches my mother's room," I whispered, grabbing a heavy metal wrench from a maintenance cart near the door.

"Quietly," Clara warned, leading the way up the service stairs toward the main residential floors.

The mansion was deathly quiet, save for the distant howl of the storm outside. The emergency alarm had stopped, plunging the estate into an eerie, shadowy silence. The red strobe lights flickered weakly, casting long, twisting shadows across the familiar hallways.

We reached the second-floor landing outside my mother's bedroom suite.

The double doors were wide open.

My stomach plummeted into freefall. We rushed inside the room.

My mother's motorized wheelchair sat empty beside the bed. The bedsheets were thrown back, and the window overlooking the cliff was shattered, glass glittering across the hardwood floor like diamond dust.

A single sheet of paper lay pinned to the pillows with a silver letter opener.

I snatched it up and read the typed words aloud:

Bennett,

If you ever want to see your mother draw another breath, bring Clara, the original 1985 partnership ledgers, and the signed deed to Hale Ventures to the old lighthouse at Point Judith within the hour. Come alone, or she goes off the cliff.

— Julian.

Clara stared at the letter, her hands trembling violently. "He took her. He took a sick, dying woman to use as leverage against us."

"Not us," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, terrifying stillness. "Against me."

I walked over to the nightstand, picked up my mother's digital medical tablet that had been left behind, and tapped the screen. A live GPS tracking app—part of the 24-hour medical monitoring network I had installed months ago—glowed green on the screen, showing the exact location of the microchip embedded in my mother's cardiac pacemaker.

A pulsing red dot was moving rapidly southwest along the coastal highway.

Destination: Point Judith Lighthouse.

"He thinks he's holding all the cards," I muttered, sliding the tablet into my coat pocket and turning to Clara. "He forgot one detail."