Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The last two guests had left.
Their footsteps sank into the hallway runner, and then the front door shut with a hollow thud.
The house was now completely sealed.
Only the four of them remained.
Julian looked around the room.
The glass cabinet displaying china. His father’s oak desk. The sideboard that smelled faintly of cedar. The faded portrait above the mantel.
The key is in this room.
But the room had too many blind spots. It had been designed to hold the secrets of people who had too much to hide.
“Martin,” Julian said.
His voice no longer held that explosive anger. It was cold. Sharp.
“What did you think the key was?”
Martin stood still, his hands at his sides. The blood on his lip had dried into a rusty black smear.
“A brass key,” Martin said. “The kind used for a bank safe. Or a deposit box. Your father had dozens of them.”
Claire suddenly stepped closer to the coffee table.
She looked down at the black gift bag. At the small gold clock resting carelessly on the white tissue paper.
“Your mother wrote that the key is not what you think it is,” Claire said slowly.
Julian turned to his wife.
“What do you mean?”
“If it isn't a brass key,” Claire looked up, her gaze sweeping over the heavy furniture, “then maybe it doesn't look like a key at all.”
Lydia picked up the clock once more.
She ran her finger along the edge of the case.
Then she turned it over.
The winding stem. It was larger than usual. And it had strange grooves.
Lydia looked at Julian.
“Julian.”
He stepped closer.
She twisted the stem backward.
It did not make the clicking sound of gears. It slipped out.
A small, slender metal rod, about two inches long, was cleverly hidden inside the axis of the clock. The end of the rod was carved into a complex hexagon.
No one breathed.
Julian took the metal piece from his sister's hand.
It was freezing cold.
May you like
He turned to Martin.
Martin's expression was no longer just fear. It was the mute shock of a man who realized he had been holding a bomb for nineteen years without knowing it.
