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.Fresh footsteps wandered across the dust that coated the marble floor.Yet the silence set him on edge.It was too much, too deep.He faded into the shadows under the stairs, waiting for the computer to perform.Some of the most valuable furniture and paintings had gone to auction, leaving blank spaces on the floor and faded squares on the wallpaper.The temperature hovered around fifty degrees, and Gabriel guessed another Maine winter would destroy anything left in here.Did Carrick not intend to sell the house and its contents? This neglect would lower the value on a priceless nineteenth-century mansion.To lose money on a sure sale.that didn’t seem like Carrick.So.what was Carrick doing?A quiet beep alerted Gabriel that the computer had gone through its paces, and had started to run the program that activated each on-site camera for a ten-second glimpse of the every corridor and room.But the house had too many rooms, and Gabriel didn’t have ten seconds to waste, so he speeded up the roll to two seconds.Yet it took a full two minutes before he located Hannah.Gabriel stopped the roll, and observed the scene in the butler’s office in the basement.There, Carrick sat before the desk in a straight-backed chair.He stared at the creaky old computer.Hannah sat in the ancient leather desk chair.She wore her new clothes and her new hair style with pride.Her chin was up.She was smiling scornfully.And Nelson, the butler, held a Beretta pointed at her heart.Gabriel texted Daniel 911, and set off at a run.Hannah divided her attention between that lousy little weasel Nelson and that lousy big weasel, Carrick.“Did you really think I wouldn’t watch for you?” Carrick stared at the computer, his face aglow—he’d just seen the total amount in Nathan Manly’s account.“Think? No.Hope? Yes.” Hannah rocked the old chair back and forth.Tithe springs creaked rhythmically.Creak, creak.Creak, creak.“I knew the key to Father’s fortune had to be here, or you would have got away with it long ago.You had to come back here.” Carrick didn’t look at her.He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the screen.“I did have to come back.To keep a promise.” Creak, creak.Creak, creak.“To my mother.Isn’t that touching?” Carrick rubbed his hand over his chest as if to calm the beat of his heart.“I admit, I’d hoped for more.”“You’d hoped for more?” Her voice rose involuntarily.“Money? More than that?”“How much is it?” Nelson asked in a hushed whisper.“About a billion,” Carrick said.Hannah corrected him.“A billion five.”Carrick glared at her.“What? Doesn’t he get a percentage?” She rocked the chair back and forth.Creak, creak.Creak, creak.“What disappoints you about a billion five?”“It’s not the amount.This program is so primitive.The screen looks like the intro to a child’s learning program.” Carrick ran the mouse up and down, back and forth.“What do we have to do next?”“It’s probably pretty simple.All you’re doing is transferring money from one place to another.” Actually, to about a thousand other places, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.“So far, it’s working the way Mrs.Manly said it would.” Creak, creak.Creak, creak.Carrick turned on her, eyes wide and wild.“Would you stop that?”“What? That?” She rocked one last time.Creak, creak.Creak, creak.“Sure.”He took a breath and calmed himself.“What comes next? How do I transfer the money into my account?”“What makes you think I would tell you that?” She injected all the scorn she felt into her voice.He turned and looked straight at her.“If you don’t, I’ll have Nelson shoot you in one foot, and then the other foot, and then—”She held up the hand with the bandage on her wrist.“All right.I get it.”Disaster stared her in the face, and she didn’t really know how to avert it.She didn’t have the information he wanted.All she was capable of doing was performing the transfer into the stockholders’ accounts.Which meant, when she’d done it, Carrick was probably going to shoot her anyway, out of spite and frustration.“So how do I make the next step?” Carrick demanded.She pushed herself across the floor in the chair, and the springs squalled and moaned.Creak, creak.Creak, creak.When she, and the chair, reached his side, she could see that his teeth were on edge.That gave her some satisfaction.“You’re into the base program.Now go to Household Accounts.”He located the icon on the desktop, and opened it.“Find Silverware, Inventory.”The cursor trembled on the screen.Carrick’s hand trembled on the mouse.Hannah liked knowing he was nervous.“Now—I input the password.” She tried to edge him aside.He refused to move.“What password?”“What difference does it make?”“I don’t trust you to do this right.I might have to do it over.”She jabbed him with her elbow, using the bony end like a sword.“If that’s what you think, what would keep me from lying to you?”Nelson shot the Beretta.The blast made her ears ring.The wheel on her chair blew into little plastic shreds.She was thrown to the floor to land on her wrist, and she writhed in pain.When the scarlet dots had stopped swimming before her eyes, she looked up to find not one, but two Berettas pointed at her.Carrick held one of the compact pistols, and he handled it like a man who knew how to shoot.“Come and sit on your squeaky chair.” He patted the seat.“And tell me what I want to know.”He was not, as she had previously thought, a bad seed.He was crazy.She glanced at Nelson
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