Chapter 7: The Safe Behind the Portrait
Inside the study, Eleanor turned away from the desk, her beige blazer hanging neatly over the back of the leather chair while she poured herself a finger of Scotch from a crystal decanter. Mark continued to pace near the French doors that led out to the moonlit terrace, his short brown hair messy from hours of agitated hand-wringing. The atmosphere in the room was thick with paranoia, the alliance between the two conspirators fracturing under the crushing weight of their impending exposure.
Out in the hallway, Grace motioned for Thomas to stay put near the corner while she slipped past the door frame of the study, utilizing the deep shadows cast by a towering mahogany grandfather clock. Her eyes darted toward the oil portrait of her great-grandfather, Jonathan Vance, which dominated the wood-paneled wall opposite the main desk.
With practiced care, Grace reached out and grasped the heavy ornate frame of the painting. She lifted it slightly upward and swung it outward on its hidden brass hinges, revealing a small, recessed metal panel set directly into the lath and plaster of the wall. There was no electronic keypad, no modern biometric scanner that could be hacked or bypassed. It was an old-fashioned combination lock with three heavy brass dials, installed when the house was built in the early nineteen-twenties.
Grace’s fingers hovered over the dials. She closed her eyes, visualizing her father’s hands guiding her through the sequence when she was just a child—a sequence based not on dates or arbitrary numbers, but on the coordinates of their family’s original homestead in upstate New York.
She spun the first dial to forty-four. The second to twelve. The third to eight.
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With a satisfying, heavy clack, the internal mechanism released. The small metal door swung open on oiled hinges, revealing a stack of thick paper ledgers and a heavy flash drive resting on a velvet cushion.
Across the room, Eleanor suddenly froze, the crystal glass halfway to her lips. She turned her head sharply toward the far wall, her eyes widening in sudden, unadulterated horror as she spotted Grace standing half-cloaked in the shadows by the portrait.
