Chapter 3 - SOMEONE HAD PREPARED THE ROOM
Clara dropped beside him.
“We’re getting out.”
She fought with the leather strap around Leo’s ankles.
It had been buckled tightly.
Far too tightly for an accident.
Smoke poured through the broken doorway.
Leo coughed.
“She said there was an electrical problem.”
“Save your breath.”
“She brought me here herself.”
Clara froze.
“When?”
“Before dinner.”
The buckle came loose.
“Did anyone else see her?”
“Mr. Crowe.”
Miles Crowe.
The Sterling family attorney.
Clara knew him well.
Tall.
Gray-haired.
Always polite.
Always present whenever property, trusts, or inheritance were discussed.
“What did he do?”
“He took my chair.”
Clara looked toward the empty hallway.
The chair outside the room belonged to an ordinary guest.
Not Leo.
“Why?”
Leo began crying harder.
“I asked him.”
“He said I wouldn’t need it very long.”
Clara felt cold despite the fire.
A beam crashed somewhere in the corridor.
They had minutes.
Maybe less.
She lifted Leo beneath the arms.
At eleven, he was already too heavy for her to carry comfortably.
But Clara had moved furniture through this house for ten years.
She could carry him.
She had to.
Leo wrapped both arms around her neck.
“Put the shawl over your face.”
“What about you?”
“Do it.”
He obeyed.
Clara stepped into the corridor.
The main staircase was blocked.
Flames had reached the ceiling.
She turned toward the servants’ stairs.
They were nearly forty yards away.
Every step became harder.
Smoke burned her lungs.
Leo’s weight dragged against her shoulder.
Then she saw something on the floor.
A small silver vial.
Leo recognized it.
“My medicine.”
Clara stopped.
His nighttime medication.
The label said one tablet.
The bottle was empty.
“How many did they give you?”
Leo’s voice was weak.
“I don’t know.”
“Leo.”
“Three.”
Clara’s blood turned cold.
Three tablets would leave him heavily sedated.
Maybe unconscious.
Maybe worse.
“Who gave them to you?”
“Aunt Eleanor.”
Clara nearly stumbled.
The truth was becoming impossible to deny.
Leo had not been forgotten.
He had been moved.
Restrained.
Medicated.
Stripped of his mobility equipment.
And placed beside an accelerant container inside the part of the mansion where the fire was spreading fastest.
Someone had prepared this room.
The servants’ staircase came into view.
Then the ceiling above it collapsed.
Clara spun away.
Leo cried out.
Their last safe route disappeared behind burning timber.
“There’s another way,” Clara whispered.
Leo knew the mansion almost as well as she did.
“The laundry lift?”
“Too small.”
“The old dumbwaiter?”
“Too dangerous.”
Then Leo pointed through the smoke.
“My father’s study.”
Clara stared at him.
Arthur’s old private study had been locked since his death.
“What about it?”
“He showed me something when I was little.”
“What?”
Leo coughed.
“A staircase behind the bookshelf.”
Clara looked toward the fire.
May you like
Arthur Sterling had apparently left his son more than a photograph.
He had left him an escape route.
