Chapter 12
The explosion sent a shockwave rolling through the floorboards, knocking Clara off balance and sending her crashing against the living room sofa.
Lily screamed, burying her face in Clara’s shoulder as thick, acrid smoke began pouring out from the heating vents in the ceiling.
“Stay down, sweetie! Keep your face covered!” Clara shouted over the rising roar of flames somewhere in the lower level of the house.
The emergency lighting system flickered on, casting a dim, sickly yellow glow across the smoke-filled room as the sprinkler system finally kicked in with a deafening hiss.
Clara clutched Detective Vance’s note in her hand, the ink beginning to smudge slightly from the moisture of the falling water.
The attic. The antique clock.
She couldn't stay here; the fire was spreading fast from the basement server room, and the federal agents were likely bottlenecked at the front entrance.
Lifting Lily into her arms, Clara bolted toward the grand staircase at the end of the hall, her boots splashing through the ankle-deep water pooling from the ceiling sprinklers.
The air grew hotter with every step, the scent of burning insulation and wiring stinging her eyes and making her cough raggedly.
She reached the top landing, bursting through the heavy double doors that led up the narrow, carpeted flight of stairs to the building's massive Victorian attic.
The attic was untouched by the smoke so far, illuminated only by shafts of amber sunlight pouring through the tall stained-glass eyebrow windows.
In the far corner, standing between two towering stacks of leather-bound ledgers, was the grand grandfather clock—a massive mahogany timepiece that had stood frozen at 3:14 for as long as Clara had worked in the house.
Clara rushed across the creaking floorboards, setting Lily down on a moth-eaten velvet settee near the window.
“Stay right here, Lily. I’ll be right back, I promise,” Clara said, her voice frantic as she approached the heavy wooden clock.
She remembered Vance’s note: Inside the antique clock.
Clara grabbed the brass face of the clock’s front panel and pulled hard. With a heavy, metallic groan, the wooden door swung open, revealing not a pendulum and brass gears, but a concealed compartment lined with green velvet.
Inside the compartment sat a heavy iron lockbox and a thick stack of manila folders labeled with the Sterling family crest.
Clara reached inside and pulled out the top folder, flipping open the cover to reveal a handwritten ledger detailing every single asset, adoption record, and medical payoff dating back twenty years.
Suddenly, a heavy footstep creaked on the attic stairs behind her.
Clara spun around, clutching the ledger to her chest, expecting to see a federal agent or a firefighter.
Instead, stepping out of the smoke-filled stairwell with a slow, agonizing limp, was Julian Sterling.
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His expensive black suit was scorched and soaked with water, his face smeared with soot, and his dark eyes burning with an unhinged, desperate fury.
“You just don't know when to quit, do you, Clara?” Julian rasped, pulling a heavy iron fireplace poker from his belt and taking a step toward her.
