Chapter Seven
Taddeo
For three minutes, no one at Northglass had known where Isolde was.
Taddeo had been told the number often enough that repeating it should have made it less irritating.
It hadn't. Three minutes was not a meaningful amount of time under ordinary circumstances.
It was barely enough to make coffee, return a phone call, cross one side of the house to the other.
On a secure property in the middle of a coastal storm, with a woman actively trying to escape and visibility reduced badly enough that cameras showed more water than landscape, three minutes was long enough for everything Taddeo had spent his adult life learning to prevent.
By the time he reached the security room shortly after midnight, he had changed out of his soaked coat and shirt, although his hair was still damp and cold remained somewhere beneath his skin.
The room occupied the lower west wing behind an unremarkable door most visitors would assume led to storage.
One wall held live feeds from across the estate, another access controls and communications equipment, and the central desk was crowded with men who had learned quickly that explanations were not improving his mood.
Marco replayed the west service camera footage.
Isolde appeared at the edge of the frame as a dark figure beneath the rain, waited while branches whipped across the camera's field of view, and moved exactly when the storm obscured her.
Taddeo watched it once.
Then again.
“She timed it,” Marco said.
“I can see that.”
“The branches were worse in the wind.”
“The branches existed before the wind.”
Marco fell quiet.
Taddeo leaned one hand against the back of the operator's chair and watched Isolde vanish behind the movement of the evergreen.
She hadn't wandered out because anger overwhelmed common sense.
She had spent the previous day learning the property, identified a weakness, watched patrols long enough to establish repetition, and waited for weather to make the weakness useful.
He was furious.
He was also impressed.
The second reaction was considerably less convenient.
“How long has the landscaping been inside that camera angle?”
Marco glanced toward one of the operators before answering. “About ten days.”
“And nobody reported it.”
“It wasn't blocking the feed under normal conditions.”
Taddeo looked at the screen, where Isolde disappeared almost completely. “Apparently normal conditions aren't the only ones we have.”
Marco nodded once.
The next feed showed her moving along the edge of the lower garden instead of using the brighter central path. Another caught only the faintest movement before she passed beyond its angle. Taddeo didn't need to watch the entire sequence again. He understood what she'd done.
She had watched people instead of cameras.
That was the part security had missed.
Nico stood several feet away with his hands behind his back, looking as though he would have preferred almost any other assignment that night.
Taddeo turned toward him. “What did she ask you?”
“Nothing about security.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Nico took a second before answering. “Weather. The road. Deliveries. She asked where the northern path went.”
“And you answered.”
“Some of it.”
“Enough.”
Nico's jaw tightened. “Apparently.”
Taddeo held his gaze. “She knew when you stepped away.”
“I was in the kitchen for a few minutes.”
Marco closed his eyes briefly.
Taddeo didn't move.
The urge to become angry in the simplest possible way came easily. It always did. Anger made punishment feel like correction and volume feel like authority. Neither would fix the problem.
“She had no phone,” Taddeo said. “No access card.
No map. She had been here less than forty-eight hours, and she still got through the service wing and past the inner patrol line before anyone had a confirmed location.
I don't care that she didn't make it to the road. I care that she understood your habits better than you understood hers.”
Nico nodded. “Understood.”
“No one is losing money over this, and no one is getting hit.
That doesn't teach you anything except to fear making me angry.” Taddeo looked around the room.
“Fix the camera. Vary patrol times. Inspect the other exterior doors and sightlines tomorrow. For the rest of tonight, double the western and northern coverage until the weather clears.”
Marco straightened. “After that?”
“Normal numbers.”
The answer surprised him.
Taddeo saw it.
“I don't want a guard ten feet from her every time she walks outside. If she thinks we're watching every breath, she'll stop showing us what she's looking at.”
Marco considered that. “Let her think she still has room.”
Taddeo looked at him.
“She does have room.”
The words sounded less convincing than he intended.
He left before anyone could answer.
Northglass had gone quiet above the lower level, although the storm still pressed rain against the windows in hard, irregular bursts. Somewhere upstairs, Isolde was likely showering, changing, or lying awake furious because every weakness she'd identified would look different by morning.
Taddeo should have been thinking about the security corrections.
Instead, he kept seeing her in the woods.
Wet hair against her face. Mud on her boots. The road visible through the trees behind her.
Let go of me.
He had.
Immediately.
The response had been instinctive enough that he hadn't thought about it until afterward.
That bothered him more than it should have.
“Taddeo.”
Elettra stood near the kitchen entrance wearing a robe over her nightclothes, silver-streaked hair loose around her shoulders. Her arms were folded.
“You should be asleep,” he said.
“So should half the household.”
He continued into the kitchen.
Elettra followed.
Taddeo opened the refrigerator without having any idea what he wanted, stared at its contents for a few seconds, then took out a bottle of water.
“Is she all right?” Elettra asked.
“Cold. No injuries.”
“She's upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“And you've finished terrifying the security staff?”
“I didn't terrify anyone.”
Elettra looked at him.
Taddeo unscrewed the bottle. “No one was punished.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
“They failed.”
“And Isolde succeeded.”
“For three minutes.”
“There it is again.”
Taddeo took a drink and set the bottle on the counter. “Three minutes was enough.”
“For what?”
He looked at her.
Elettra waited.
“For nobody to know where she was.”
“Isolde,” Elettra corrected quietly.
Taddeo's jaw tightened. “Don't.”
“I'm not doing anything.”
“You are.”
“I'm standing in my kitchen at half past midnight because you have half the property acting as if a museum conservator breached a military installation.”
“She almost reached the road.”
“Yes.”
“She could have been hurt.”
Elettra's expression softened slightly, but not enough to let him off the hook. “I know.”
“She doesn't know the land. She doesn't know who might be watching Corwin's contacts. She would have gotten into the first car that stopped because she believed anyone outside this property was safer than us.”
“That last part should bother you for a different reason.”
Taddeo looked away.
The kettle sat near the sink. Elettra filled it and switched it on before continuing, forcing the conversation into the rhythm of something almost domestic.
“You're correcting the security problem,” she said. “Fine. Fix the camera. Change the routes. Do whatever you do. But if all you understand from tonight is that the fence needs to be harder to cross, she's going to do it again.”
“You don't know that.”
“I watched her come upstairs soaked through and furious. She didn't look like a woman who had learned escaping was a bad idea. She looked like a woman who had learned she needed a better plan.”
Taddeo thought of Isolde walking back through the trees beside him, still paying attention to every turn.
Elettra was right.
He disliked that immediately.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Give her something here that still belongs to her.”
“She isn't leaving.”
“I didn't say she should.”
“She isn't getting unrestricted contact.”
“I didn't say that either.”
The kettle began to hiss softly.
Elettra turned toward him. “Her work matters to her. Her friend matters to her. Right now you've taken both, along with her phone, her apartment, and every ordinary decision she made for herself two days ago. Then you're surprised she looked at a storm and decided it was worth walking into.”
Taddeo rested both hands against the counter. “Her job is secure.”
“Does she know that?”
He said nothing.
Elettra nodded once. “Then it isn't secure to her.”
The answer landed harder than it should have.
Taddeo looked toward the dark windows above the sink.
“Call the museum,” Elettra said. “Arrange whatever respectable emergency explanation men like you arrange when you don't want ordinary people asking questions. Make sure she isn't losing her life while she's stuck here.”
“And Linnea?”
“Let her tell the woman she's alive.”
“No.”
Elettra sighed and reached for a tin of tea. “Then she'll try again.”
“If Linnea hears her voice, she'll know something is wrong.”
“She probably will.”
“She could call the police.”
“She probably should.”
Taddeo turned his head.
Elettra lifted one shoulder. “You kidnapped her friend. I'm not going to pretend the police would be an irrational response.”
“A message,” he said after a moment.
Elettra paused.
“Written. From Isolde.”
“Actually from Isolde?”
“Yes.”
“Not something one of your people writes after studying her texts?”
The fact that he'd already considered exactly that irritated him.
Elettra saw the answer in his expression.
“If you fake a message from her to her closest friend,” she said, “she's going to find something considerably sharper than that pen.”
Taddeo almost smiled.
Elettra narrowed her eyes. “I'm serious.”
“I know.”
He left the kitchen with two decisions he hadn't intended to make when he entered it.