a long moment, neither of them moved.
The machine breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Somewhere in the walls a pipe ticked, and the lilies on the sill nodded in a draft from nowhere.
Behind her, the old man sighed.
"You are cleverer than I credited, Miss Maya."
She turned.
He stood in the white corridor in a dark velvet dressing gown, leaning on his cane, with his silver hair loose around his face. In the cold light he looked suddenly very old. The skin of his throat hung in folds. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired. But the smile on his lips was exactly as gentle as before, and that was the horror of it.
"You have the code," he said. "I confess I did not expect that. Mark, was it?"
"No," said Maya.
"Of course." He sounded amused. "You are protecting him. How very fine."
"I counted," she said, which was true. "I watched your thumb."
"Did you?" He raised his eyebrows. "Well. I should have known. A teacher's gift, observing small children." His gaze drifted past her to the bed, and softened. "She is lovely, isn't she?"
"She's your daughter."
"My Elena." His voice dropped almost to a whisper. "Yes. My only one. The light of my life."
"You told Travis she was dead."
"I told him what was necessary." The old man's eyes came back to hers. "What would you have had me do? Let him keep her? Let that ruffian from the docks drag her through the gutter, bear his child, and die in his arms of a defect he did not know how to treat? She would have been in the ground by thirty." His mouth trembled. "I took her home. I have kept her alive for three years. I have not slept a night through in all that time."
"You killed a stranger and burned a car to make him think she was dead."
"I have done a great many things." The gentleness did not waver. "All for love. You will understand, one day."
"I won't."
"Oh, but you will." He took a step toward her. "When it is your turn."
Cold swept over her.
He knows I know.
It doesn't matter. He's going to do it. It's decided.
She forced herself to hold still, to keep her face smooth, to breathe slowly. Her right hand hung at her side. Her thumb found the grey wool button at her cuff.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Count.
"I came down to see the child's mother," Maya said carefully. "Mark mentioned a lady. I thought—"
"No."
The word was soft as snow.
"No, my dear. We shall dispense with the little performance. I know exactly why you came. You are not the first to try." He lifted two fingers. "Your friend Mr. Travis has had you practice. A pleasant little speech. Seventy-two hours. Proof of life. Did he think I was an idiot?"
Maya's mouth was dry.
"I have known since Friday morning," said the old man gently. "I knew when you spoke of the proof. Mark's father is many things, but he is not a fool. He would not require a recording of a child he could see for himself, unless he wished me to wonder what he was hiding." The smile deepened. "I permitted you to stay, because I was curious. I wished to see what he would do. And what you would do. And where you would go."
He turned his cane in his hand.
"And now I know."
"Then you know," Maya said, with a courage that surprised her, "that he's coming."
"Of course he is."
"He'll burn this house down."
"I should be disappointed if he did not." The old man gestured to the door behind her, and for the first time she saw the two men standing in the corridor, in black coats, with guns drawn. "But he will not reach you."
…
They did not hurt her.
That was the strangest part. No one raised a hand. No one threatened or shouted. The two men simply took her by the arms, politely, and walked her back up the stairs and along the corridors to a different room, a windowless chamber at the end of the service corridor, with an iron bed and a single bulb on a cord. They closed the door. She heard the key turn.
She stood in the middle of the floor and listened to the footsteps retreat.
Then she heard something else.
A small voice, raised in a thin high wail, somewhere far down the corridor. A door banging. A man's voice, quiet and firm. Come along, young master. It is time to go.
"Mark!"
She flew at the door, pounded it with her fists. "MARK!"
"Ms. Maya! MS. MAYA!"
The cry broke, cut off, muffled, as though someone had put a hand over the boy's mouth.
Footsteps. A door slamming. And then, horribly, silence.
She slid down the wood until she sat on the cold floor, and shook.
Not yet.
Count to five.
Wait until you're sure.
She pressed her palm to the button at her cuff, a small hard knob of wool, and held it there. She felt it vibrate faintly, a tiny pulse.
One.
She pressed harder.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
The button gave a soft click against her skin.
She released it.
Nothing happened.
There was no sound, no light, no change in the air. She sat on the stone floor, in the dark, with the bulb swaying overhead and her heart hammering, and she thought, with a terrible, hysterical calm: what if it's broken?
What if he's not coming?
What if I was wrong?
She laid her head on her knees.
…
She lost count of the hours.
It might have been two. It might have been six. The bulb burned. The silence thickened. Once she heard a man whistle, a casual, tuneless sound, in the corridor outside, and once the faint bark of a dog. Her throat was parched. Her stomach was a clenched fist. When at last the key rattled in the lock, she was so far beyond fear that she merely lifted her head.
The old man stood in the doorway.
He had changed into a charcoal suit. He held a silver tray with a cup of tea and a plate of bread and butter, which he set on the floor at her feet with the tender courtesy of a host.
"You must be hungry."
She said nothing.
"I wanted to have a word before the evening." He sat down, with difficulty, on the edge of the iron bed, and laid the cane across his knees. He looked tired. "I find that I do not enjoy this part. I wanted you to understand. I do not hate you, Miss Maya. I have always thought you the most remarkable young woman. You are kind, and brave, and clever, and good. You are precisely the kind of person I wished my Elena to be."
"Then don't do it."
"But that is why."
She stared at him.
"She must have a good heart," he said simply. "It would not do to give her a bad one."
The horror of it rose up in her throat like bile.
Reaching into his jacket, the old man drew out a small black pistol, polished and cold, and laid it on the blanket beside him, so gently it made no sound. His eyes did not leave her face.
"It is on the table," he said, "in the interests of honesty. I will not use it. It would be a waste. But I should like you to know that it is there. You are very good at observing. I wouldn't care for you to make a foolish mistake."
Maya looked at the gun.
Then she looked up, and met his eyes.
"Mark was right about you," she said quietly.
"Was he?"
"He said you never yelled. He said you gave him a train." Her voice shook, then steadied. "He's five. He loves you. He thinks you're the only one who can keep the bad people away. Do you know what he'll think when he finds out what you did?"
The old man's smile faltered.
"He will not find out."
"He will."
"He is a child."
"He's your daughter's son," said Maya. "And he'll look at you with her eyes."
For the first time, something flickered across the old man's face. It was there and gone: a flinch, a fracture, a tremor in the corner of his mouth. He rose abruptly, snatched up the pistol, and for an instant she thought he would strike her.
Instead he stood over her, white-faced, trembling.
"Eat," he said. "You will need your strength."
He went out.
The door slammed. The key turned. And then, from somewhere very far away, a faint thud rolled through the walls, deep and heavy, like a drum struck in another room.
Maya lifted her head.
The bulb on its cord swayed.
Another thud. Another. The floor trembled under her palms.
Somewhere, a bell began to clang, wildly, erratically. Then a siren, high and thin. Men shouting. The crash of breaking glass. And then, unmistakable, like a stitch ripped through cloth, the stutter of automatic fire.
He came.
She was on her feet before she knew it, pressing herself against the door.
"Travis!" she screamed. "TRAVIS! I'M HERE!"
Gunfire. Closer. A man's cry. Boots pounding in the corridor.
Then a heavy blow shook the door. And another. Wood cracked.
"Stand back!" a voice roared. "Maya, get away from the door!"
She flung herself against the wall.
The door burst inward in a spray of splinters, and Travis came through it like the wrath of God.
He was in black, and he carried a rifle. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and a smear of soot lay across his forehead, and his eyes in the swinging light were blazing. He saw her. He crossed the room in two strides and caught her up against his chest, and for one long, shuddering instant he didn't say a word.
"You pressed it," he said hoarsely. "You pressed it."
"I counted to five."
"I know. I know. I felt it."
"Mark," she gasped. "They took Mark. He's somewhere in the service corridor—"
"We have him."
"What?"
"Rourke's team found him. One of the guards brought him to the kitchen door. A big man." Travis pulled back to look at her. "A giant. He said you'd been kind to his daughter's favorite song."
Maya laughed. It came out as a sob.
"Move," said Travis. "We have eleven minutes before reinforcements."
…
The villa was burning.
They ran down the burning corridors, through smoke and falling plaster, past dead men and broken furniture. Rourke's men fell in on both flanks, grim shapes with rifles. A stairwell collapsed behind them in a roar of sparks. Maya coughed and choked, one hand locked in Travis's, the other pressed to her mouth.
At the foot of the great stairs, a man in a leather jacket rose out of the smoke with a pistol.
"Down!" Travis shouted.
She dropped.
Bang.
Something hot and sharp tore across the air above her head. Travis spun, and she heard his breath hiss between his teeth, and then he fired twice, and the man fell.
"Travis!"
"It's nothing."
"You're bleeding!"
"It grazed me." He gripped her arm and hauled her up. His left sleeve was black and wet from the shoulder to the elbow. "Keep going. Keep going."
They burst out of the kitchen door into the cold night air.
The courtyard was a battlefield. Three black cars idled at the foot of the steps, their doors open. Smoke boiled from the east wing and rolled across the stars. In the open back door of the nearest car sat a small figure wrapped in a blue blanket, with big grey eyes.
"Ms. MAYA!"
She fell on her knees in the gravel and caught him. He flung himself into her arms, and she held him so hard that he squeaked. A huge hand patted her shoulder awkwardly.
"Ma'am," rumbled the granite-faced guard, standing over them with a rifle on his shoulder. His eyes were wet. "I couldn't let them take him."
"Thank you." Her voice broke. "Thank you. Thank you."
"Come on," said Travis.
They piled into the car. Doors slammed. Engines roared. The convoy lurched forward, tires spitting gravel, and swung out through the broken gates onto the black road.
Maya twisted in her seat and looked back through the rear window.
The old villa was burning like a torch. Flames climbed the tall chimneys. Sparks spiraled upward into the dark, red and gold, a thousand dying stars.
And in the midst of the fire, on the gallery of the third floor, a single figure stood motionless: tall, thin, white-haired, with a cane in his hand.
He was not running.
He was watching the car go.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned, and walked back into the flames.
A tunnel, Maya thought. Behind the shelf with the music box. Mark's secret.
He's going to get away.
Mark was shaking in her lap. Travis's arm was round both of them, hot and wet with blood. The car sped on, through the black pines, deeper and deeper into the night.
She closed her eyes and counted the stars.
One.
Two.
Three.
