I don't know what woke me, the sound of breaking glass or the blare of the alarm. It must have been the alarm, but as I struggled to wake, I imagined I'd heard glass break, the thud of footsteps.

I'd been deeply asleep, caught in the beginnings of a nightmare. Anthony chasing me through the endless halls of Winters House, my heart pounding in fear and his fingertips grazing my shoulder as he reached for me.

I was still untangling dream from reality when Gage rolled out of bed, yanked on his boxers, and pulled a gun from the bedside table. He held the weapon as naturally as if it were a part of him. After so many years in the army, it probably was. He stopped at the door to look over his shoulder and said, “Stay there.”

The hell I would.

I wasn't foolish enough to follow him down the hall. I didn't have a weapon, and I wasn't trained in self-defense or any of the other things the security guards and Gage undoubtedly knew how to do.

But Amelia was right across the hall, and the alarm would have woken her up. I had to get over there and make sure she stayed in her room because, while I might have been wise enough to stay put, Amelia was daring enough not to.

Knowing she wouldn't be able to resist her curiosity for long, I quickly changed into the clothes I'd been wearing that day, glad I hadn't stuffed them into the hamper. Gage had dragged me into my room only seconds after Amelia had gone to sleep, stripping me efficiently at the side of the bed before drawing me under the covers and keeping me awake for hours.

My cheeks warmed at the memory. I shook it off and buttoned my shirt. Shoving my feet into slip-on sneakers, I went to the bedroom door and cracked it an inch, peering into the hall.

At the far end, by the library and Aiden's office, I saw lights and movement, heard voices through the din of the alarm. The hall itself was empty. I crossed to Amelia's door, arriving just as she was drawing it open and preparing to slip out.

“Don't even think about it,” I said, sliding my arm around her shoulders and turning her back into her bedroom. She came with me easily enough.

“What's happening?” She asked. “Is everyone all right?”

“I don't know,” I said, as soothingly as I could, given my own nerves. I led her to the oversize armchairs in the sitting area of her bedroom and urged her down. “I'll make you some tea.”

“I don't want any tea. I want to know what's going on,” she said querulously, sounding her age for the first time since I'd known her.

She might not have wanted tea, but the normalcy of it would soothe her. I went to the bookcase on the other side of the room where Amelia had an electric kettle, two mugs, and a box of tea.

As I heated water and chose a teabag filled with soothing herbs and flowers, I reflected that if I'd had an electric kettle and tea in my room, I wouldn't have had to wander to the kitchen in the middle of the night and probably never would have gotten to know Gage. At least not the way I did, alone and in the dark of night.

Even without our secret meetings, I was pretty sure we would have ended up where we were eventually. There was something that drew us together, something primal. Living at Winters House, there was no shortage of attractive men around. I wasn't blind, I could appreciate their good looks, but they weren't Gage. They weren't mine.

The alarm finally cut off, the sudden silence oppressive. Amelia looked to the door and then to me. “Can we open it? I want to hear what's going on.”

I dropped tea bags into mugs of hot water and carried them to the armchairs, placing them on the table between them before I sat opposite Amelia. “No,” I said, gently. “I locked the door, and we’re not opening it until Gage or Aiden tells us to.”

“I don't like being shut up in here,” she complained.

“I don't like it either,” I admitted, bobbing my teabag up and down in my mug, watching the hibiscus flowers stain the water red. “But we don't know if it's safe out there, and we don't want to get in their way.”

“You’re right; I'm just terrible at waiting.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” I muttered into my tea, my lips curving at Amelia's laugh.

It was an eternity before a light knock sounded on Amelia's bedroom door, followed by the handle turning and releasing. At the door, I heard Gage's low rumble, tight with a thread of tension as he said, “Sophie, tell me you’re in there. “

“I'm here,” I said as I hurried to unlock the door. “Is everyone all right?”

I opened the door to see Gage on the other side, in one piece and seemingly unharmed. Reassured that he was okay, I relaxed a little. His gun was nowhere to be seen, but I didn't doubt he had it on him.

“Everyone is fine. Aiden wants us in the dining room.”

“Why did the alarm go off? Was someone in the house?” Amelia asked from behind me.

Gage shook his head as he ushered us out of the room. Not in denial, I realized, when he said, “In the dining room.”

“But—” Amelia protested. Gage wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

“Sweetheart, I know the suspense is killing you, but just give it a minute, and we’ll tell you everything. Lise is freaked out, and this will be easier if we're all together.”

I slowed as we passed the library, glancing over my shoulder to see two men in dark clothes at one of the windows taping thick plastic over the empty space where the window glass had been. Before I could come to a stop and look more closely, Gage caught my hand in his and tugged me along to the dining room.

Aiden waited just outside the door, his arms around Annalise, speaking in her ear in low, soothing tones. Whatever he was saying, it wasn't working. Her blue eyes were wide with shock, her face pale, hands shaking.

As we sat around one end of the table, Gage leaned into me and asked, under his breath, “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said, mostly telling the truth. I was somewhere in between Amelia and Annalise. Now that Amelia could see for herself that her family was safe and well, I could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was more curious than alarmed by whatever had happened. Annalise, on the other hand, looked ready to bolt.

Gage sat between Amelia and me. I suspected Aiden would have taken the head of the table, but he sat opposite us, next to Annalise, and took one of her trembling hands in his. She curled her fingers around Aiden's and held on, tight.

“Cooper is sending more security,” Aiden began. “They should be here any minute, so don't be alarmed if you see more of the Sinclair team in the house. We're going to search the lower level. Whoever got in didn't know about the motion alarms and set them off when he or she tried to enter the hall. They broke the glass in the library window to get out, but they didn't have time to cover their tracks.”

“What does that mean?” Amelia demanded. “Cover what tracks?”

“Did you catch him?” Annalise asked in a thin voice.

Shaking his head, Aiden said, “No. We saw someone running across the back lawn when we got to the window. One of the security team went after whoever it was, but they had too much of a head start. And we don't know that it's a man. We don't want to make any assumptions. We made that mistake with Marissa Archer when she was leaving the pictures. We might've caught her sooner if we hadn't assumed the person on the security tapes was a man.”

“Cover what tracks?” Amelia repeated.

“The hidden door in the library leading to the hall outside the theater room downstairs was open. However the intruder has been entering the house, we think they're getting in down there. We’re going to start looking tomorrow.”

“This is an old house,” Gage said. “The rooms on the lower level have been repurposed more than once, but there used to be a furnace, a coal chute, who knows what else. We'll figure out how they're getting in and seal it off.”

A quick double knock sounded at the door to the dining room, and we all turned to see a man in a Sinclair Security uniform standing at the door, holding a wooden box.

Aiden gave him a questioning look, and he said, “We found this outside the broken window. It had fallen open, and the contents were scattered in the dirt. We think this is what the intruder was after, but when he dropped it, it opened, and he had to abandon it if he wanted to get away. We put everything back in the box and thought you might want to take a look.”

Crossing the room, he handed the box to Aiden and turned to go.

“It's possible this is what the intruder has been after from the beginning,” Gage said, studying the box on the table in front of Aiden. A little taller than a shoe box but about the same dimensions, it was made of dark wood, with brass hinges and a brass clasp. There was a lock on the front. It looked as if it had been smashed in, I was guessing by the intruder.

Aiden lifted the heavy lid of the box, folding it back carefully and drew out a creamy sheet of paper with smears of dirt on the front. His eyes scanned the scrawling, handwritten note. When he was done, he set it on the dining room table and pulled out a second, seemingly identical folded sheet of paper.

When he reached for the third, Annalise ran out of patience and snapped, “Aiden!”