Chapter 5 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
The house instantly plunged into chaos.
A deafening, shrill alarm ripped through the estate. Emergency strobe lights pulsed red along the baseboards. Heavy, reinforced steel shutters slammed down over the floor-to-ceiling windows and the front doors with a violent crash, sealing the house like a vault.
“No!” Chloe shrieked, covering her ears.
Hector instinctively swung his weapon toward the stairs, but Sofia had already vanished back into her bedroom, the heavy oak door slamming shut and locking from the inside.
I didn’t wait.
I lunged forward, grabbing the heavy bronze umbrella stand near the door, and swung it with everything I had into Hector’s ribs.
Hector grunted in pain, his weapon discharging wildly into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on us. He stumbled backward, dropping the gun.
I tackled him to the marble floor. We grappled, my fists slamming into his face. He was trained, but I was a father fighting for his children. I drove my elbow into his jaw, and Hector went limp, unconscious.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing his dropped weapon.
I turned toward the living room.
Chloe was gone.
“Where did she go?” I yelled over the blaring alarm, looking at Marisol.
Marisol was pointing toward the rear hallway leading to my private study. “She ran! She still has the watch!”
I looked down at the floor near the stairs.
The piece of construction paper Sofia had thrown was resting on the marble. I picked it up, my hands shaking.
It was a drawing done in crayon.
It showed a stick figure of a little girl hiding under a bed. Standing over the bed was a monster with sharp teeth. But the monster wasn’t Chloe.
The monster was wearing a black suit and a security badge. Hector.
And in the corner of the drawing, Sofia had drawn my wife, Elena, holding a bright red coat.
I stared at the drawing, the final piece of the puzzle locking into place.
Answer: Hector was the monster Sofia was afraid of.
Open: Why did she draw Elena holding a red coat?
“Marisol,” I said, turning to the housekeeper. “The night Elena died. Was she wearing a red coat?”
Marisol’s eyes widened. “Yes. She was wearing her red winter coat when she collapsed in the bathroom. The paramedics took it off her.”
“Where is that coat now?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“It’s in the cedar closet,” Marisol said. “In your study.”
Chloe wasn’t running to escape. She couldn’t escape. The house was locked down. She was running to my study to destroy the one piece of evidence she hadn’t accounted for.
I sprinted down the rear hallway, my dress shoes slipping on the hardwood floor.
I reached the heavy mahogany doors of my study. They were locked from the inside.
I didn’t hesitate. I aimed Hector’s weapon at the brass lock mechanism and fired twice.
The wood splintered. I kicked the door open.
The room was bathed in the red strobe lights of the alarm.
Chloe was frantically tearing through the walk-in cedar closet. She had the red wool coat in her hands and was trying to rip the silk lining apart.
“Drop it,” I commanded, leveling the gun at her chest.
Chloe froze. She looked at the gun, then at me. Her hair was disheveled, her mask of perfection entirely shattered.
“You don’t have it in you, Alexander,” she spat, her chest heaving.
“Drop the coat, Chloe.”
She let the red wool fall to the floor.
I stepped into the room, keeping the weapon trained on her.
“Kick it over here.”
She kicked the heavy coat across the Persian rug. It slid to a stop at my feet.
I didn’t take my eyes off her. “Marisol!” I yelled.
Marisol appeared in the doorway a second later, out of breath.
“Check the coat,” I ordered. “Check the pockets. Check the lining.”
Marisol knelt down, her hands trembling as she patted down the thick red wool of her dead best friend’s coat.
“There’s something hard in the collar,” Marisol said, her voice shaking.
“Rip it open.”
Marisol pulled hard on the stitching. The old thread gave way with a tear.
She reached inside the lining and pulled out a small, heavy object.
It wasn’t a document. It wasn’t a flash drive.
It was a heavy, silver medical bracelet.
“What is that?” I asked.
Marisol looked at the engraved metal, tears welling in her eyes.
“It’s Hector’s,” she whispered. “It’s his medical alert bracelet. He wears it for his diabetes.”
The reversal hit me like a physical blow.
Elena hadn’t just collapsed. There had been a struggle. She had ripped the bracelet off Hector’s wrist while he was killing her, and managed to shove it into the lining of her coat before she lost consciousness.
Hector murdered my wife. And Chloe ordered it.
“You killed her,” I whispered, staring at Chloe, the sheer magnitude of the evil standing in my home finally breaking over me.
Chloe didn’t cower. She threw her head back and laughed.
“She wouldn’t sign the money over, Alexander!” Chloe yelled over the alarm. “She found out I was her sister. She found out I was bankrupt. She laughed in my face! I had to take it!”
“So you killed her, and then spent three years manipulating your way into my bed?” I asked, disgusted.
“It was easy,” Chloe sneered. “You were so lonely. So desperate for someone to help with the girls.”
Suddenly, the red strobe lights stopped pulsing. The deafening alarm abruptly cut off, plunging the house into an eerie, heavy silence.
The backup generator kicked on.
A voice crackled over the intercom system mounted on the study wall.
It was Hector. He was awake.
“Mr. Vance,” Hector’s voice echoed through the house, completely calm, devoid of pain. “I have bypassed the manual lockdown from the security terminal.”
May you like
My heart stopped.
“And right now,” Hector continued, “I am standing outside the girls’ bedroom door. Put the gun down and send Chloe out with the coat, or I shoot the lock off.”
