Chapter 13
Skye
By the time Irish and I returned to the safe flat, the others had transformed the dining room into something halfway between a command center and an architect's worst nightmare.
New photographs covered nearly every inch of the table, several maps had been taped to the wall beside Cipher's screen, and Hawkeye had expanded the hand-drawn sketch of Croft House with additional camera arcs, access points, and estimated blind spots.
Storm sat at one end of the table with her laptop open and three abandoned coffee cups clustered around her elbow, while Raze stood near the window speaking quietly into his phone.
Trigger had claimed the chair closest to the entrance, one boot stretched in front of him as he studied a list of vehicle registrations, and Maverick's voice drifted from the kitchen where he appeared to be arguing with Ellie over the phone about whether instant coffee constituted a crime against humanity.
Under any other circumstances, the disorder might have felt almost comforting, the kind of organized chaos that came from too many capable people working toward the same goal.
Tonight, however, the photographs of Croft House waiting on the table pulled my attention immediately back to the west wing and the thin figure I had seen standing behind the blinds.
Irish came in behind me and closed the door, and although nobody asked why the drive back had taken longer than expected, I caught Raze looking between us with the unmistakable expression of a man considering whether his next comment was worth the physical consequences.
Storm glanced at him once, and whatever he had been preparing to say apparently died before reaching his mouth.
Irish noticed the exchange too, but rather than react, he moved toward the table with the same controlled ease he carried everywhere, as though kissing me against a stone wall earlier had not changed the atmosphere between us at all.
I might have believed the performance if I hadn't felt his attention brush over me twice before we reached the center of the room.
Cipher noticed us first. "Good. Fraser, I need you."
I removed my coat and laid it over the back of a chair. "That's an encouraging greeting."
"It wasn't meant to be."
"Of course not."
He brought up a series of photographs taken from the western side of Croft House.
Most came from public planning archives and older aerial surveys, but several were new, their angles close enough to the perimeter that I immediately knew Hawkeye had gone nearer to the estate during daylight than Irish had been willing to risk with me beside him.
The images showed the greenhouse, the surviving garden wall, and the dense vegetation around the suspected laundry entrance with considerably more clarity than anything we had studied before.
Cipher enlarged one of the frames. "Recognize this?"
At first I thought he meant the brickwork or the timber framing along the greenhouse, but then my eyes caught on a narrow painted marking near the side of the structure, so faint it might have been dismissed as damage if someone had not known exactly what to look for.
Three short vertical lines were cut by a longer horizontal one, followed by a small diagonal slash.
My breath caught.
"Where did you get that?"
"Hawkeye."
The prospect looked over from the far side of the table. "Side of the greenhouse. Could barely see it through the ivy."
I stepped closer to the screen. "That's hers."
Irish moved beside me immediately. "What does it mean?"
"It looks like contractor shorthand, and that's probably why nobody removed it.
" I enlarged the photograph until the edges blurred slightly.
"But Isla uses these marks differently depending on what she's trying to flag.
Three short vertical lines with a cross-mark means a temporary partition.
The slash tells me whether the partition is being removed or whether something behind it has been concealed. "
Cipher leaned closer to his monitor. "Which one is this?"
"If the slash angles down, the partition is scheduled for removal. If it angles up, something has been covered."
I studied the enlarged photograph, and my stomach tightened when I realized the slash unmistakably angled upward.
Storm rose from her chair and moved around the table. "So, the greenhouse isn't only screening the old entrance."
"No. Isla was telling me something behind it had been deliberately concealed."
I looked toward Hawkeye. "Did you see anything else?"
He nodded and reached for his notebook. "There was another mark lower on the frame. I thought it was damage until Cipher started comparing the photographs."
The next image was worse than the first, partly obscured by peeling paint and damp wood, but enough remained for recognition to hit immediately. A small square had been drawn near the lower corner, followed by two dots and one narrow line.
Irish caught the change in me before anyone else. "What?"
I pointed toward the symbol. "That isn't construction shorthand."
"What is it?"
For a moment I was back in the Thistle & Stone office years earlier, listening to Isla complain about a client in St Andrews who had somehow managed to forget the downstairs bathroom on three consecutive renovation drawings and then blamed us when the contractor asked where it was supposed to go.
The square with two dots had started as a joke after that project, a private symbol between us for something obviously present that somebody had either forgotten or deliberately refused to acknowledge.
Over time, Isla had used it whenever a plan contained a hidden room, an omitted staircase, a sealed storage area, or any other space that existed despite what the official drawings claimed.
"The square means something is there even though the plan says it isn't," I explained. "We started using it years ago whenever somebody omitted a room or concealed an existing feature."
Storm looked toward the line beneath the symbol. "And that?"
I swallowed before answering. "Occupied space."
The room went quiet.
Raze lowered his phone and turned fully toward the screen. Trigger leaned forward in his chair, and even Cipher stopped typing for a moment.
Irish's voice dropped. "Does the line tell us how many people?"
"No. It isn't a count. It's a category." I looked at the mark again, and the implication widened painfully in my chest. "Isla used it on residential conversions when a space was actively occupied rather than simply structural.
She wasn't only marking a hidden route. She was telling me the concealed section contained people. "
Nobody spoke for several seconds, and the silence felt heavier than anything that had followed the discovery of Croft House itself.
For days, every clue had narrowed toward Isla.
I had measured walls, compared invoices, chased ownership records, and walked into buildings I had no business entering because every step seemed to answer the same question: where had they taken my best friend?
Now the truth had expanded beyond her. Isla was not the only person behind those walls.
She might not even have been the reason the hidden wing existed.
Croft House had been designed to confine people before she ever stepped inside it, and the thought of her discovering that while trapped there made something in me twist hard enough that I had to take a step away from the table.
Irish saw it immediately. "Skye."
"I'm fine."
The words sounded false even to me.
Storm's expression softened, and somehow that kindness made everything harder.
"I just need a minute."
Nobody stopped me as I crossed the hallway and entered the narrow bedroom I had used earlier to change clothes.
I left the door unlocked and sat on the edge of the bed, pressing both hands over my face as though shutting out the room might somehow quiet everything inside my head.
For weeks I had wanted proof that Isla was alive.
I had it now. I had wanted to know where she was.
I knew. I had wanted somebody—anybody—to believe me when I insisted something terrible had happened.
Now an entire room full of people believed me, and none of it made the fear smaller.
If anything, knowing more had only given the fear a shape I could no longer avoid imagining.
I could picture Isla's room now because I had stood inside one almost exactly like it: pale walls chosen to look calm, artificial flowers meant to imitate warmth, restricted windows, and a lock designed for someone standing on the wrong side of the door.
I could imagine Isla noticing every alteration because she had never known how to stop reading buildings, even when doing so would have been easier.
She would have measured the corridor in her head, compared windows against walls, memorized door locations, and left marks anywhere she thought I might eventually find them because somewhere beneath whatever fear she was living with, she still believed I would understand.
That thought nearly undid me.
A quiet knock sounded against the door a few moments later.
I didn't answer immediately.
The door opened only a few inches, and Irish remained on the other side rather than walking in.
"You said no locked doors."
Despite everything, a weak laugh escaped me. "It's not locked."
"I know."
He waited there, giving me the choice instead of deciding for me.
That mattered more than I could explain.
"You can come in."
Irish entered and pulled the door mostly closed behind him, deliberately leaving enough space that the latch never engaged. The gesture was subtle, but after everything we'd seen behind locked doors, I understood exactly why he had done it.
"You don't have to stand there like you're guarding me."
"I'm not."
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting."
"For what?"
"Whatever you need."
The answer landed harder than comfort had any right to.