Chapter 2 - The Sound Behind the Wall
Nathan arrived at the Ostrander estate shortly before four the following afternoon.
The rain had stopped, but the ocean remained violent beyond the cliffs, hammering the rocks beneath the property with enough force to make the windows tremble.
Rook climbed from the back of Nathan’s SUV without being called.
The mastiff was eleven now.
Gray had begun spreading beneath his jaw and along the heavy muscles of his shoulders, but the dog still moved with the deliberate confidence of an animal that understood exactly how much space the world owed him.
Warrick watched him.
“Think he remembers?”
Nathan looked at the mansion.
“I’m counting on it.”
The front doors required both hands to open.
Cold air rolled through the entrance hall.
Dust covered the marble.
Sheets hung over antique furniture like bodies waiting beneath hospital linen.
The air carried an odor Nathan could not immediately identify.
Salt.
Old wood.
Mildew.
And something sweeter underneath.
Rook stepped across the threshold.
Stopped.
His entire body stiffened.
Nathan noticed immediately.
“Rook.”
The mastiff’s ears lifted.
Then something happened Nathan had not heard in six years.
Not a bark.
Not quite.
A low, broken whine crawled from the dog’s throat.
Warrick slowly removed his gloves.
“Well,” he whispered. “That answers my question.”
Rook began walking.
They followed.
He ignored the grand staircase.
Ignored the dining room.
Ignored a hallway leading toward the servants’ quarters.
Instead, he crossed the entrance hall and entered the library.
Books still filled three walls.
The fourth wall looked empty except for dark mahogany paneling surrounding a marble fireplace.
Rook walked directly toward it.
He placed his nose against the paneling.
Whined again.
Nathan approached.
“What?”
Rook scratched once.
His claw left a pale line in the wood.
Warrick crouched.
“Don’t.”
Nathan looked at him.
“You afraid of damaging the house?”
“I’m afraid of discovering why the dog remembers it.”
Nathan knocked against the panel.
Solid.
He moved eighteen inches to the right and knocked again.
The sound changed.
Hollow.
Nathan glanced at Warrick.
Neither spoke.
Twenty minutes later, a contractor from one of Nathan’s companies arrived with tools.
Nathan trusted the man because his father had trusted the man’s father.
That did not mean Nathan allowed him to use his phone inside.
They removed the first section of mahogany.
Behind it stood a second wall.
Cheap framing.
Modern drywall.
Nathan stared at it.
The mansion had been built in 1891.
Nothing about the hidden wall belonged in a nineteenth-century estate.
The contractor touched one screw.
“Recent.”
“How recent?”
“Could be months. Maybe a year.”
Warrick’s face changed.
Nathan caught it.
“You know something?”
“No.”
Nathan stepped closer.
“That wasn’t a question.”
Warrick met his eyes.
“I said I don’t know.”
The contractor removed another screw.
Then another.
By six fifteen, they had opened a section large enough to reveal darkness behind it.
Nathan turned on his flashlight.
A narrow room appeared.
No more than four feet deep.
Maybe twelve feet long.
It had once been part of the library.
Someone had deliberately reduced the room to hide it.
Rook pushed through first.
“Rook.”
The dog ignored Nathan.
He moved toward the far corner.
There was something on the floor.
A leather collar.
Small.
Cracked.
Nathan recognized it before he picked it up.
Rook’s old collar.
The one Lydia had bought him.
Nathan remembered teasing her about it because she had paid nearly four hundred dollars for handmade Italian leather.
“You spent more on the dog than your car insurance.”
“He has better taste than I do.”
Nathan could still hear her answer.
His fingers tightened around the collar.
There was dried brown material along the buckle.
Blood.
Rook lowered himself beside Nathan.
For a moment Nathan forgot Warrick and the contractor were watching.
He rubbed the dog’s scarred neck.
“You came back here.”
Rook closed his eyes.
“Yes,” Nathan whispered. “You came back.”
The contractor called from the opposite wall.
“Mr. Vance.”
Nathan stood.
Embedded behind the framing was a steel box.
Not a safe.
More like a document case.
The lock had already been broken.
Someone had opened it recently.
Most of the case was empty.
But whoever searched it had missed something wedged beneath the lining.
An old digital voice recorder.
Warrick stopped breathing.
Nathan noticed.
He picked it up.
The battery was dead.
They returned to the entrance hall where Nathan connected the recorder to a portable charging unit.
For seven minutes nothing happened.
Then the screen flickered.
Thirty-eight recordings appeared.
Most were corrupted.
Nathan selected the final surviving file.
The date appeared.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2019.
Two days before the fire.
Nathan pressed play.
Static filled the entrance hall.
Then a woman spoke.
Nathan closed his eyes.
Six years disappeared.
Lydia.
“If you’re listening to this,” she said, “then either I finally became paranoid enough to deserve Nathan’s jokes…”
A small laugh.
Nathan’s throat tightened.
“…or something went wrong.”
Warrick sat down.
Lydia continued.
“Gideon Ostrander was telling the truth. The harbor contracts are connected to Lyle Development, three city officials, and someone inside Newport law enforcement. There are payments disguised as preservation grants. I found containers that were never inspected, invoices that were changed after delivery, and account numbers that trace back twenty years.”
Nathan looked at Warrick.
Lydia’s voice lowered.
“Celeste wants to help. She’s terrified of her husband, but she says Gideon kept copies of everything because he never trusted the men paying him.”
A noise sounded in the background.
Lydia stopped speaking.
Five seconds passed.
Then she returned.
“If Nathan ever hears this, tell him I’m sorry.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“For what?”
The recording continued.
“I should’ve told you where I was going. But I couldn’t.”
Her breathing changed.
“There are people inside your organization I don’t trust.”
Warrick stood.
Nathan slowly looked toward him.
Then Lydia said the sentence that changed the room.
“Warrick knows why I came here.”
Silence.
Nathan did not move.
Warrick stared at the recorder.
Lydia continued.
“He made me promise not to tell you yet.”
Nathan turned.
“What did she mean?”
Warrick said nothing.
“Answer me.”
“Nathan—”
The recorder crackled.
Lydia’s voice returned.
“If I disappear, ask Warrick about the call from September sixteenth.”
Nathan stopped.
September sixteenth.
The night of the fire.
The night Warrick had told Nathan he had been home asleep.
Nathan looked at the man who had raised him.
The man who had attended every school conference.
Who had taught him to shave.
Who had stood beside him at Lydia’s missing-person press conference and sworn he knew nothing.
“Was she here that night?”
Warrick’s face went pale.
“Yes.”
Nathan stared at him.
“You spoke to her?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Warrick swallowed.
“One thirty-seven in the morning.”
Nathan’s voice became frighteningly quiet.
“And for six years you never told me.”
Warrick looked older than Nathan had ever seen him.
“Because your sister made me swear I wouldn’t.”
Nathan stepped closer.
“My sister disappeared.”
“I know.”
“She may have died here.”
“I know.”
“You watched me tear apart half the East Coast looking for her.”
Warrick’s eyes shone.
“I know.”
Nathan’s fist closed.
“Then you have exactly ten seconds to tell me what happened on that call.”
Warrick looked toward Rook.
The mastiff was standing beside the open wall.
Watching them.
Finally Warrick spoke.
“Lydia told me someone was coming to kill everyone in that house.”
Nathan felt the floor shift beneath him.
“She asked me to come.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
Warrick looked directly at him.
“Fire.”
His voice cracked for the first time in Nathan’s memory.
“And Rook lying in the road with his throat cut.”
Nathan said nothing.
Warrick continued.
“But that wasn’t the part I hid from you.”
He reached inside his coat.
Slowly.
Nathan’s hand moved instinctively toward the weapon beneath his jacket.
Warrick removed an old envelope.
Water stained.
Yellowed.
Nathan recognized Lydia’s handwriting on the front.
NATHAN.
Warrick held it out.
“She gave this to me three days before the fire.”
Nathan took it.
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because she told me not to unless the house was opened again.”
Nathan looked toward the hole in the library wall.
Then tore open the envelope.
Inside was a single photograph.
Nathan stared at it.
It had been taken from a distance.
A parking lot.
Two men beside a black sedan.
One was Prescott Lyle.
Nathan knew the second man too.
Every person in Rhode Island knew him.
Retired Superior Court Judge Malcolm Voss.
The same Malcolm Voss who had signed the order officially closing the Ostrander investigation in 2019.
On the back Lydia had written eight words.
THEY DIDN’T KILL GIDEON BECAUSE OF THE MONEY.
Nathan turned the photograph over again.
Below the first sentence, almost hidden beneath a water stain, Lydia had added another.
THEY KILLED HIM BECAUSE HE FOUND OUT WHO WAS STILL ALIVE.
At that exact moment, Rook began scratching frantically at the far end of the hidden room.
Nathan looked up.
The mastiff was no longer interested in the steel case.
May you like
He was staring at the floor.
Then the old dog began digging.
