CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jenna woke with a start. The darkness around her was broken only by thin bars of moonlight that slanted through a gap in the window curtains. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was—then Jake’s voice whispered in her ear.
“Are you awake?”
She pressed on the earpiece. “Yes,” she whispered back, heat rising to her cheeks though no one could see her embarrassment. She’d dozed off, despite her best intentions. Too little sleep the night before—her lucid dream with her father and Pete Shannon had left her drained.
The room took shape around her as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Ruth McElmurray’s bedroom, with its high ceiling and Victorian furnishings.
The four-poster bed beneath her, the closed closet door where Jake was hidden, watching and waiting.
The antique dresser against the far wall, its mirror reflecting nothing but shadow.
And opposite the bed, almost invisible in the gloom, the ornately carved wall panel that concealed the passageway entrance.
Jenna shifted carefully beneath the covers, feeling for her service weapon under an extra pillow that no one was using.
Her flashlight lay at her side, ready if needed.
She wasn’t planning to use lethal force—not unless absolutely necessary.
She also had pepper spray and handcuffs ready to restrain their suspect, once they had him.
If their trap worked.
“The walls,” Jake’s voice came again, low and urgent. “I’m hearing something. Like someone’s moving through them.”
Jenna held her breath, straining to listen. At first, nothing—but then she heard it too: a faint rustling, like cloth brushing against wood. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the wall panel.
“He’s here,” she whispered into her earpiece.
Their plan was simple. When the killer entered the room and moved close to the bed, Jenna would hit him with pepper spray while Jake burst from the closet to help subdue him. Together, they’d make the arrest—and finally put an end to the threat that had already claimed two lives.
Assuming everything went according to plan.
Jenna kept her breathing slow and even—the picture of an elderly woman sleeping peacefully. The rustling continued, growing gradually louder. Then, with a faint scrape of wood against wood, the panel slid open.
She could see it through slitted eyes—the dark rectangle appearing in the wall, a shadow there in the opening. Jenna fought the urge to tense up, to reach for her weapon.
Patience.
They needed the suspect fully in the room before they moved.
Jenna waited for the sound of footsteps that would tell her the intruder had entered the room. But there was nothing—no creak of floorboards, no footsteps on the carpeted floor. She realized he wasn’t wearing shoes and was moving in almost perfect silence.
But not quite perfect. Soon she could hear his breathing directly above her—close enough that she could almost feel the warmth of it against her face. It was time.
Jenna gripped the pepper spray. In one swift motion, she sat up, arm extended toward the shadow looming over her.
Her thumb pressed down on the trigger—but the figure moved faster, already backing away.
The spray cut through empty air, missing its target by inches.
Jenna fumbled for her flashlight, switching it on to illuminate the room.
The beam fell on a face that stopped her heart mid-beat.
It was the face in the portrait Nolan had showed them. He had a full head of dark hair parted in the middle and a thick mustache, a high-collared Victorian shirt and waistcoat that might have been lifted from a museum display.
Pete Shannon.
For one frozen moment, the intruder stood in her flashlight’s beam. Then he turned and bolted for the passageway, dropping something to the floor as he went.
“Now!” Jenna shouted for Jake to hear, already scrambling from the bed.
The closet door flew open as Jake burst out, gun in hand. But the suspect was already at the panel, slipping through the narrow opening with the ease of long practice, then deftly sliding it shut behind him. From inside came the faint sound of retreating footsteps—soft and quick, almost inaudible.
For a split-second, Jenna’s flashlight beam glimpsed the object he had dropped—a framing hammer, the intended murder weapon.
Jenna was on her feet in a single bound, Jake close behind her.
She threw off the nightgown, grabbed her gun, then used her flashlight to find the onyx button nestled in the grape design on the wall.
But when she got the passageway open it was silent and their flashlights revealed nobody in sight.
“I’ll take left, you take right,” Jake said. “Stay in contact. If you see him, don’t approach alone—wait for backup.”
Jenna knew there was no time to argue. The passageway branched just beyond the entrance—left and right, both directions leading deeper into the mansion’s hidden heart. The suspect could have gone either way.
Jake charged after him, taking a left at the junction, his flashlight beam bobbing as he moved. Jenna angled to the right. The passage was narrow—barely wide enough for her to pass through—and smelled of dust and old wood. The floor beneath her feet was smooth, worn by decades of use.
She moved as quickly as caution would allow, flashlight sweeping back and forth ahead of her. The beam caught only bare wood and the occasional dust bunny—no footprints, no sign that anyone had passed this way. Had the suspect gone left after all?
The passage curved gently, then straightened again. Jenna kept her pace steady, one hand on her weapon, the other guiding the flashlight. Ahead, the corridor ended in another T-intersection—left and right again, both directions identical in the dim light.
“Jake,” she whispered into her earpiece. “I’m at another junction. No sign of him yet. Which way did you go?”
“Still following the left branch,” came the reply, slightly staticky. “It’s heading toward the east wing. Nothing so far.”
Jenna hesitated, then turned right again, following her instinct. The new passage was even narrower than the first, the ceiling so low she had to duck her head to avoid the exposed beams. The air felt thicker here, stale with decades of confinement.
She’d gone perhaps twenty feet when the passage took a sharp turn to the left.
Jenna paused, listening. From somewhere ahead came a faint rustling—the same sound they’d heard in Ruth’s bedroom.
The suspect had to be just beyond the turn, moving through the walls with the confidence of someone who knew every inch of the maze.
But when she rounded the corner, flashlight extended, the beam fell on nothing but blank wall. The passage ended in a dead end—bare wood panels, identical to those lining the rest of the corridor.
The rustling came again, this time directly in front of her—on the other side of the wall.
“He’s here,” she whispered into her earpiece. “I’m at what looks like a dead end, but I can hear him moving on the other side.”
“Stay put,” Jake replied. “I’m doubling back. Don’t move until I reach you.”
But Jenna was already examining the wall, studying the wood grain.
If there was another passage here, there had to be a way to access it.
The panels were smooth beneath her touch, showing no obvious seam or catch—until her fingers brushed against something cool and hard, set into the wood at waist height.
A black onyx button, identical to the ones that had opened the passages elsewhere in the house.
“I think maybe I’ve found something,” she whispered as she pressed the button. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a soft click, a section of the wall slid inward, revealing another narrow corridor beyond.
This new passage was different from the others—shorter and narrower, with a ceiling that sloped downward. Jenna’s flashlight beam couldn’t reach the end of it. She stepped into the opening, moving cautiously. Three steps in, the beam of her flashlight suddenly fell on empty space.
Jenna stopped. The passage didn’t end—it turned downward. She was facing a vertical shaft with a ladder bolted to one wall, its rungs disappearing into darkness below.
She moved closer, shining her light down the shaft. How far down did it go? And what waited at the bottom? She was sure that this hadn’t appeared on the diagrams she’d seen.
She was about to radio Jake when something hit her from behind—a hard shove between her shoulder blades that sent her stumbling forward, and then she was falling, arms flailing.
Jenna twisted in mid-air, trying to protect her head, but the darkness rushed up to meet her. The back of her skull struck something hard, and then—
Nothing.