Ch.40: The Frame-Up

I dropped the brass candlestick. It hit the carpeted landing with a dull, heavy thud that sounded like a final heartbeat. At the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Higgins lay twisted, her floral robe fanned out around her like a bruised orchid. Her head was tilted at an impossible angle against the marble riser.

She didn't move. She didn't even twitch.

I scrambled down the steps, my knees nearly giving way. My nursing instincts, dormant under the weight of this house, flared to life. I reached for her carotid.

Cold. Nothing.

"Elena?"

The voice was a whip-crack. I spun around, my back hitting the banister. Isabella stood at the entrance of the service hallway, her emerald pendant glowing like a predator's eye in the dim light. She didn't look at the body with horror. She looked at it with a chilling, clinical detachment.

"I... she attacked me," I rasped, my hands shaking so violently I had to tuck them into my apron. "She saw the camera. She tried to take it. We fought and she just—she slipped."

Isabella walked toward the edge of the landing, her silk heels clicking rhythmically. She peered down at the wreckage of the woman who had served her for a decade. Then, she looked up at me, her face a mask of iron.

"A very convenient accident, wouldn't you say?" Isabella whispered.

"It wasn't convenient! It was self-defense!"

"Julian is already in a state of terminal paranoia, Elena. If he sees his Head Housekeeper dead at the feet of the woman he already suspects is a mole, what do you think his conclusion will be?"

She stepped closer, her scent—expensive rosewater and something metallic—cloying in the narrow space.

"I told you I let you into the server room to control the source," she hissed, her eyes widening. "But you’ve become sloppy. You’ve brought blood onto the floorboards, and that I cannot hide from the Board."

"Isabella, listen to me—"

"I listened to you when you promised precision," she cut me off, her voice dropping into a lethal register. "I allowed the false truce because I thought you had the discipline to play your part. But a nurse who kills the staff is no longer an asset. She is a liability. And liabilities in this house are liquidated."

I realized then that she didn't believe it was an accident. She didn't care if it was. She was simply using the corpse as the ultimate leverage to terminate our agreement.

She raised her hand and pressed a button on the small device clipped to her waist.

"West Wing," she said into the air. "Intruder on the service stairs. Code Black."

"No!" I lunged for the micro-camera on the floor, but Isabella stepped on it, the plastic shattering under her heel with a sickening crunch.

Heavy boots thundered down the hallway. Three guards in tactical gear rounded the corner, their tasers drawn and humming with a blue, lethal light.

Isabella stepped back, smoothing her gown as if she were merely dismissing a clumsy maid.

"Take her to the holding block," Isabella commanded, her voice devoid of any humanity. "She’s a liability now, Elena. And I’m done protecting my mistakes."

Security grabs me. The truce is over.