by Ivy Layne
Sophie
I don't know what woke me, the sound of breaking glass or the blare of the alarm. It must have been the alarm, but as I struggled to wake, I imagined I'd heard glass break, the thud of footsteps.
I'd been deeply asleep, caught in the beginnings of a nightmare. Anthony chasing me through the endless halls of Winters House, my heart pounding in fear and his fingertips grazing my shoulder as he reached for me.
I was still untangling dream from reality when Gage rolled out of bed, yanked on his boxers, and pulled a gun from the bedside table. He held the weapon as naturally as if it were a part of him. After so many years in the army, it probably was. He stopped at the door to look over his shoulder and said, “Stay there.”
The hell I would.
I wasn't foolish enough to follow him down the hall. I didn't have a weapon, and I wasn't trained in self-defense or any of the other things the security guards and Gage undoubtedly knew how to do.
But Amelia was right across the hall, and the alarm would have woken her up. I had to get over there and make sure she stayed in her room because, while I might have been wise enough to stay put, Amelia was daring enough not to.
Knowing she wouldn't be able to resist her curiosity for long, I quickly changed into the clothes I'd been wearing that day, glad I hadn't stuffed them into the hamper. Gage had dragged me into my room only seconds after Amelia had gone to sleep, stripping me efficiently at the side of the bed before drawing me under the covers and keeping me awake for hours.
My cheeks warmed at the memory. I shook it off and buttoned my shirt. Shoving my feet into slip-on sneakers, I went to the bedroom door and cracked it an inch, peering into the hall.
At the far end, by the library and Aiden's office, I saw lights and movement, heard voices through the din of the alarm. The hall itself was empty. I crossed to Amelia's door, arriving just as she was drawing it open and preparing to slip out.
“Don't even think about it,” I said, sliding my arm around her shoulders and turning her back into her bedroom. She came with me easily enough.
“What's happening?” She asked. “Is everyone all right?”
“I don't know,” I said, as soothingly as I could, given my own nerves. I led her to the oversize armchairs in the sitting area of her bedroom and urged her down. “I'll make you some tea.”
“I don't want any tea. I want to know what's going on,” she said querulously, sounding her age for the first time since I'd known her.
She might not have wanted tea, but the normalcy of it would soothe her. I went to the bookcase on the other side of the room where Amelia had an electric kettle, two mugs, and a box of tea.
As I heated water and chose a teabag filled with soothing herbs and flowers, I reflected that if I'd had an electric kettle and tea in my room, I wouldn't have had to wander to the kitchen in the middle of the night and probably never would have gotten to know Gage. At least not the way I did, alone and in the dark of night.
Even without our secret meetings, I was pretty sure we would have ended up where we were eventually. There was something that drew us together, something primal. Living at Winters House, there was no shortage of attractive men around. I wasn't blind, I could appreciate their good looks, but they weren't Gage. They weren't mine.
The alarm finally cut off, the sudden silence oppressive. Amelia looked to the door and then to me. “Can we open it? I want to hear what's going on.”
I dropped tea bags into mugs of hot water and carried them to the armchairs, placing them on the table between them before I sat opposite Amelia. “No,” I said, gently. “I locked the door, and we’re not opening it until Gage or Aiden tells us to.”
“I don't like being shut up in here,” she complained.
“I don't like it either,” I admitted, bobbing my teabag up and down in my mug, watching the hibiscus flowers stain the water red. “But we don't know if it's safe out there, and we don't want to get in their way.”
“You’re right; I'm just terrible at waiting.”
“Tell me something I don't know,” I muttered into my tea, my lips curving at Amelia's laugh.
It was an eternity before a light knock sounded on Amelia's bedroom door, followed by the handle turning and releasing. At the door, I heard Gage's low rumble, tight with a thread of tension as he said, “Sophie, tell me you’re in there. “
“I'm here,” I said as I hurried to unlock the door. “Is everyone all right?”
I opened the door to see Gage on the other side, in one piece and seemingly unharmed. Reassured that he was okay, I relaxed a little. His gun was nowhere to be seen, but I didn't doubt he had it on him.
“Everyone is fine. Aiden wants us in the dining room.”
“Why did the alarm go off? Was someone in the house?” Amelia asked from behind me.
Gage shook his head as he ushered us out of the room. Not in denial, I realized, when he said, “In the dining room.”
“But—” Amelia protested. Gage wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
“Sweetheart, I know the suspense is killing you, but just give it a minute, and we’ll tell you everything. Lise is freaked out, and this will be easier if we're all together.”
I slowed as we passed the library, glancing over my shoulder to see two men in dark clothes at one of the windows taping thick plastic over the empty space where the window glass had been. Before I could come to a stop and look more closely, Gage caught my hand in his and tugged me along to the dining room.
Aiden waited just outside the door, his arms around Annalise, speaking in her ear in low, soothing tones. Whatever he was saying, it wasn't working. Her blue eyes were wide with shock, her face pale, hands shaking.
As we sat around one end of the table, Gage leaned into me and asked, under his breath, “You okay?”
“I'm fine,” I said, mostly telling the truth. I was somewhere in between Amelia and Annalise. Now that Amelia could see for herself that her family was safe and well, I could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was more curious than alarmed by whatever had happened. Annalise, on the other hand, looked ready to bolt.
Gage sat between Amelia and me. I suspected Aiden would have taken the head of the table, but he sat opposite us, next to Annalise, and took one of her trembling hands in his. She curled her fingers around Aiden's and held on, tight.
“Cooper is sending more security,” Aiden began. “They should be here any minute, so don't be alarmed if you see more of the Sinclair team in the house. We're going to search the lower level. Whoever got in didn't know about the motion alarms and set them off when he or she tried to enter the hall. They broke the glass in the library window to get out, but they didn't have time to cover their tracks.”
“What does that mean?” Amelia demanded. “Cover what tracks?”
“Did you catch him?” Annalise asked in a thin voice.
Shaking his head, Aiden said, “No. We saw someone running across the back lawn when we got to the window. One of the security team went after whoever it was, but they had too much of a head start. And we don't know that it's a man. We don't want to make any assumptions. We made that mistake with Marissa Archer when she was leaving the pictures. We might've caught her sooner if we hadn't assumed the person on the security tapes was a man.”
“Cover what tracks?” Amelia repeated.
“The hidden door in the library leading to the hall outside the theater room downstairs was open. However the intruder has been entering the house, we think they're getting in down there. We’re going to start looking tomorrow.”
“This is an old house,” Gage said. “The rooms on the lower level have been repurposed more than once, but there used to be a furnace, a coal chute, who knows what else. We'll figure out how they're getting in and seal it off.”
A quick double knock sounded at the door to the dining room, and we all turned to see a man in a Sinclair Security uniform standing at the door, holding a wooden box.
Aiden gave him a questioning look, and he said, “We found this outside the broken window. It had fallen open, and the contents were scattered in the dirt. We think this is what the intruder was after, but when he dropped it, it opened, and he had to abandon it if he wanted to get away. We put everything back in the box and thought you might want to take a look.”
Crossing the room, he handed the box to Aiden and turned to go.
“It's possible this is what the intruder has been after from the beginning,” Gage said, studying the box on the table in front of Aiden. A little taller than a shoe box but about the same dimensions, it was made of dark wood, with brass hinges and a brass clasp. There was a lock on the front. It looked as if it had been smashed in, I was guessing by the intruder.
Aiden lifted the heavy lid of the box, folding it back carefully and drew out a creamy sheet of paper with smears of dirt on the front. His eyes scanned the scrawling, handwritten note. When he was done, he set it on the dining room table and pulled out a second, seemingly identical folded sheet of paper.
When he reached for the third, Annalise ran out of patience and snapped, “Aiden!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sophie
Aiden’s dark brows pulled together in concentration. He looked up at her and gave a tiny shake to his head. She shifted in her chair, I thought repressing the urge to get up and snatch the box away from her older cousin. Aiden dug to the bottom of the box and drew out one more letter, this one on gray paper larger than the first few notes. He scanned it and returned it to the bottom of the box.
“So far, they're all addressed to your mother,” he said, looking from Annalise to Gage. “No signature.”
“From our father?” Annalise asked, reaching for one of the letters Aiden had left on the dining room table. Aiden moved it out of her reach before he answered.
“It's not his handwriting. Not my father's either. The date on the letter from the bottom was July 1980. Before Anna started dating Uncle James. The letter on the top was from a year after they got together.”
“What did they say?” Gage asked.
“They appear to be love letters,” Aiden said quietly as shock settled over the room.
Beside me, I felt Gage go utterly still. This was his mother they were talking about. I knew from Amelia that shortly before I'd been hired, they'd discovered that Anna Winters had borne a child and given him up for adoption before she'd married James Winters. They'd been looking for the missing child ever since.
Finding the box should have answered questions instead of creating more. Had Anna been the one to carefully pack up all those letters? What were they doing in the library? And how had the intruder known where to look?
Gage studied the box sitting so innocuously on the table and said, “I don't remember seeing that box anywhere in the library.”
“Neither do I,” Aiden said. “But there's more hidden in there than just the door to the lower level. My dad told me there were secret compartments.”
“Where?” Annalise asked. “Why didn't I know about this? Did you know?” She asked Gage.
Gage gave a guilty shrug. “Uncle Hugh said there were three, but Aiden and I only ever managed to find one. Could the box have been in another? Who would've known where to look?”
“Where is it? Where's the secret compartment that you found?” Amelia asked.
Both Aiden and Gage remained silent, and Amelia scowled at them, muttering, “You don't have to tell me, I’ll figure it out.”
I didn't have to wonder what our next project would be. Maybe searching for the hidden compartments would keep Amelia out of trouble.
“What if this is him?” Annalise asked. “What if this is the missing baby?”
“You think our intruder is Anna's missing son?” Aiden asked.
“There's a logic to it,” Gage said. “Just because we can't find him, doesn't mean he doesn't know who he is, or who we are. We have no idea what he's been told or how he was raised. He could hold a grudge or have an agenda we know nothing about.”
“It could be the father,” Amelia cut in. “None of the documents Charlie found revealed the identity of the baby's father. We know it couldn't have been James, but James knew about the baby, or that paperwork wouldn't have been so easy to find. That box of letters just proves my point. If Anna was trying to hide them, she would've burned them or torn them up, not put them in a box. I'd bet either Hugh or James had that box, not Anna. She never favored the library when she was in the house. Anna loved the living room. More light, she always said.” A shadow crossed Amelia's face, and I reached out to squeeze her hand.
Across the table, Annalise propped her heels on the edge of her chair, bringing her knees to her chest, and wound her arms tightly around them, turning herself into a defensive ball. “So basically we have no idea who it is. It could be my missing half-brother; it could be my mother's lover—”
“It could have something to do with that phone call,” I cut in.
Gage and Aiden exchanged a look I couldn't decipher. They knew something. I sat up straighter in my chair and leaned forward, looking between them.
“The break-ins started after I moved in. Not long before I got that phone call. This might not be about your family at all. This might be about me.”
“You’d been living here for months before anything happened,” Aiden argued. “I think it's unlikely this is related to your phone call.”
Before I could say anything, Gage jumped in. “It's not about you, Sophie. If the intruder had anything to do with you or Anthony Armstrong, why would he want a box of my mother's old love letters?”
I couldn't argue that logic. The timing just seemed odd.
“It could be my stalker,” Annalise said in a stark, flat voice.
“No.” Aiden and Gage both answered, together. Aiden continued, “The timing doesn't work, Lise. The break-ins started well before you came home and they don't follow the pattern. There was no card, no note, no flowers, no gifts.”
“Maybe he's escalating,” she said.
Aiden gave her a sharp look. “Did something happen you haven't told us about?”
“I didn't say that,” Annalise hedged.
“It’s not the stalker,” Aiden said.
Annalise settled back into her chair, her expression unconvinced. “I should leave,” she said.
“Don't even think about it,” Aiden said. “Tate is getting married in two days. You can wait two days.”
Annalise gave a noncommittal shake of her head. Aiden packed the letters back in the box and stood.
“The house is secured for the night. We have extra security outside, two in the library, and two downstairs. The window will be repaired tomorrow. I suggest we all try to get some sleep. Lise, I'd like you to move up to Gage's room. It's less exposed than your bedroom at the front of the house.”
“I thought you said the house was secure,” she said.
“It is,” he said gently, “but I think you'll sleep better upstairs. The only way to Gage's room is the main staircase, and that has sensors all over it. Jacob's suite is the only other room near yours, and it's empty. You won't be able to relax down there, and I know you don't want to sleep with Amelia.”
“My snoring isn't that bad,” Amelia muttered.
“We can hear you across the hall,” Gage said, easily. My cheeks burned at his open admission that he was sleeping in my bed every night. Everyone knew it, but knowing it and talking about it in the open were two different things.
“Gage,” I hissed under my breath.
“Angel,” he said, trying to hide his laugh. He reached out and took my hand, running his thumb over my knuckles. I couldn't bring myself to lift my gaze from the surface of the dining room table. I was too embarrassed.
“I'll move my things upstairs,” Annalise said, taking the attention off me. I shot her a grateful look, and she returned it with a kind smile.
We all stood, and Gage turned to me, saying quietly, “Walk Amelia back to he
r room and stay with her until I come get you. I'm going to help Annalise move her things upstairs and grab what I need. Wait for me to get back before you go to your room.”
“I thought you said the house was safe.”
“It is. Just humor me, okay?”
I walked Amelia back to her room and busied myself rinsing out our tea cups and throwing away the used tea bags. So many secrets. I'd been living with the Winters family for over six months, and I still couldn't keep track.
Maybe I was paranoid, but I was sure Aiden and Gage were keeping something from me. Something about that phone call or Anthony. I didn't need any more intrigue. I had enough of it trying to keep up with Amelia. I'd managed to keep her from pulling any pranks at Charlie's wedding, but she was planning something for Tate’s. I knew it. I just couldn't figure out what it was.
She'd snuck off a few times, and I'd caught her staring out the window with a secret smile playing across her lips. After half a year together, I knew the signs. She had something up her sleeve.
Trying to use our time alone to my advantage I said, “If you're planning a joke or surprise for Tate's wedding, please don't. This is not the time. Everyone is too on edge.”
“That's exactly why this is the time,” Amelia said. “Trust me. I'm not going to scare anyone, but we need to relieve a little tension around here. Everyone is way too pent up.”
“Amelia, did you see Annalise? She looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. And Gage is doing better than he was when he came home, but he's still not ready for surprises. If you're going to do something, at least tell me what it is.”
Amelia pressed her lips together and shook her head. “No, you can't keep a secret. You're going to have to trust me.”
“I love you,” I said, “but when it comes to this, I don't trust you as far as I can throw you.”
“Hmph,” she grumbled as she let me tuck her into bed. “That's not very far. You have T-Rex arms.”
I looked down at my arms and back to Amelia. “I do not! My arms are a completely normal length.”