Hollow Floors
They split into teams the way soldiers divide for advantages — practical, cold, but at least organized. Ethan sent the core security to sweep the west wing; Damien and two men checked the service exits; Mia and two techs crawled through digital logs; Clara and a single senior guard combed the immediate gardens. Marcus hovered, then fell in with Ethan's inner knot as if by instinct rather than choice.
Ethan's head was a dozen simultaneous calculations. The missing woman was more than a person now; she was leverage, proof, and leverage again. If Victor wanted to tear the house down, he'd start with the thing that would cut Ethan the deepest: family.
"Check the cameras now," Ethan ordered Mia. She was a warrior who liked code like some people liked prayer.
Mia crouched over the laptop on the library table, fingers moving with the precise fury of someone rewiring a life. "Camera feed shows Eleanor left her room intentionally — she waved to camera three as if she wanted to be seen. After that, the west corridor camera shows a flicker and then a short blackout, like the feed was looped."
"Looped?" Damien echoed. "So someone prepared the camera. That takes planning."
"Whoever did this knew our schedule," Mia answered. "They knew when the guard rotations would be light."
Clara's stomach dropped. "So not a random kidnap."
"No." Ethan's tone was short and sharp. "This was surgical."
Marcus's jaw worked. "If Victor has access to internal systems, he can time everything." He swallowed. "He told me months ago: make them feel safe, then take their safety away."
Clara looked at him. "You were a part of that plan."
"I didn't know the scope," Marcus said, voice small for the first time. "I never wanted Eleanor hurt. She — she took me in when no one else would."
Ethan's expression didn't soften. "The past doesn't justify the present."
They moved through rooms like people disassembling a bomb — cautious, patient. Each unlocked cupboard and unbolted latch felt like a confession.
On the third floor, a small study with green wallpaper and a faded globe, Clara found something that made the floor drop under her feet: a child's drawing tucked into an old book — a small, clumsy sketch of a woman with long hair and a big smile. A note scrawled on the back in a looping handwriting read: For Mum — Marcus. The heart at the corner had been cut out of a magazine and pasted on.
She pressed the scrap to her chest as if to hold meaning in place. "He was a child," she whispered. "He loved her, once."
Marcus's shoulders shook. "He still does." Then, as if to punish himself, he added, "I let anger teach me first."
They didn't have time for tenderness. Down the corridor, a metallic echo — the subtle sound that arrives when someone tries to pick a lock and fails in haste.
Ethan gestured, and they moved as a single body down the corridor, guns up. In the far stairwell, a gloved hand slid across the banister — a smear of blood where someone had been grabbed, perhaps dragged.
They followed the tracks into the service basement: a low, cluttered place that smelled of oil and old paper. The light was thin, edges blurred. As they advanced, a single shoe — a neat, sensible shoe that looked out of place among crates — sat on the floor.
Clara reached for it and held it up. "It's hers."
Ethan's voice was a measured blade. "Get the med team. Now."
The emergency crew poured in, voices crisp, paramedics' light moving across the machinery. They called for a stretcher. The shoe was catalogued; the boot print measured and then set aside.
And yet the body they'd expected to find — limp, bruised, somewhere between fear and surrender — was not there. There were only signs: a smudge of makeup on the stair railing, a perfume scent that evaporated like a promise.
Ethan's hands flexed. "She was moved. Recently. Not more than forty minutes."
Mia's laptop chimed. "I've found something else." She looked up, eyes alight with a terrible clarity. "There's an outgoing packet to an IP address traced to a small warehouse on the docks."
Ethan's jaw set. "Victor's patterns: move goods by night, hide people and papers among them. Damien — you and I are going to the docks. Marcus — you stay with Clara and the mansion. Mia, get me a back channel. Find any live feed from that warehouse."
Damien slapped his jacket closed. "Docks? In this weather? Who made you the reckless one?" He grinned, which made his face look like it had better color.
"Someone who can't afford to lose family," Ethan said.
They moved fast. Rain had turned the streets into mirrors. The docks smelled like salt and diesel and promises that had dissolved. The warehouse stood darker than the night around it, a hulking thing with a shadow for a heart.
Damien and Ethan pried at the side entrance while Mia flicked through feeds — the security replaced the normal cycle with an old loop, but she cracked it, finding only static and whispers.
They slipped inside and found crates stacked in a careless, deliberate way — the sort of careless that only comes from which plan is perfected. The crates were labeled with innocuous names — cloth, hardware — but inside they found nothing like that. Inside, beneath a blanket, they found a small wooden box.
Ethan opened it with a hand that wouldn't tremble. Inside was an envelope. On it, in red ink: To Blackwood. One final piece.
He looked down.
The next line was a photograph — a shot of the mansion from the garden, taken at dusk. The snapshot captured the exact moment when Eleanor had walked out of her door, stepping into the corridor.
On the back: four words, in handwriting he recognized, every syllable a blade:
"You were warned already."
The world narrowed.
Outside, the rain picked up, steady and indifferent.
Ethan's phone buzzed. An unknown number displayed. He answered.
A voice that had threaded the city with threats said, calmly: "Look closer, Ethan."
Behind him, the warehouse door clanged shut.