Chapter 1 - Five Candles Waiting
“Mia!”
Sarah Mercer shoved past a waiter carrying lemonade and nearly knocked a tray from his hands.
“Mia! Where’s Mia?”
Thirty people turned toward her.
The birthday cake sat untouched beneath the white pergola at the center of Evelyn Mercer’s enormous backyard, five pink candles waiting in a perfect row. A sugar crown leaned against Mia’s name in gold frosting. Children in bright summer clothes stood frozen with paper plates in their hands. Behind them, the rectangular blue pool glittered beneath the June sun.
Mia was supposed to be standing beside that cake.
She wasn’t.
Sarah had checked the playhouse, the downstairs bathroom, the rose garden, and the upstairs room where the children’s coats had been left. She had called Mia’s name until panic had sharpened her voice into something she barely recognized.
“Mia!”
Her mother-in-law, Evelyn, rose slowly from a shaded table.
At sixty-three, Evelyn Mercer possessed the polished stillness of someone who had spent most of her adult life making other people wait for her to speak. Her blonde-gray hair was pinned elegantly behind one ear. Not a wrinkle disturbed her pale blue jacket.
“Sarah,” she said. “Stop frightening everyone.”
Sarah swung toward her.
“My daughter is missing.”
“She’s five. She’s probably hiding.”
“She knows not to hide from me.”
Several guests began checking beneath tables and around the hedges.
Sarah took another step toward Evelyn.
“When did you last see her?”
Something shifted near the cluster of children.
A small girl emerged.
Zoe Bennett was five too, one of Mia’s closest preschool friends. Her natural curls were tied with yellow ribbons that matched her party dress. Normally she was the loud one—the child who sang before anyone asked and corrected adults when they misnamed dinosaurs.
Now she looked as if she wanted to disappear.
“Zoe?” Sarah said.
The girl stared at her.
Then she lifted one trembling arm.
Her finger pointed directly at Evelyn.
“I saw her lock Mia up.”
Silence spread across the lawn.
Sarah heard a glass hit the patio.
Evelyn’s head snapped toward Zoe only after the child had finished speaking.
“How dare you lie!”
The words came sharp enough to make several adults flinch.
Zoe did too.
Her eyes widened. Her shoulders folded inward. She took half a step backward and pulled both arms close to her chest.
Sarah saw it.
Not confusion.
Fear.
She crossed the lawn in three strides and crouched in front of the little girl.
“Zoe.”
Zoe’s gaze flicked toward Evelyn.
Sarah gently moved into the child’s line of sight.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
Zoe did.
“Where is Mia?”
Zoe swallowed.
Only when Sarah had finished the question did she turn slightly and raise her arm again.
This time she pointed across the patio.
Toward the pool.
“Under the pool.”
Sarah stared at her.
For half a second her mind rejected the sentence because it made no sense.
Then Zoe’s finger gave direction to the impossible words.
The pool.
Sarah looked.
Blue water. White stone. Two empty lounge chairs. Floating balloons reflected on the surface.
Nothing else.
Behind her, someone whispered Mia’s name.
Sarah rose.
Evelyn stepped forward.
“Sarah, wait.”
Sarah ran.
“Sarah!”
She did not stop.
She crossed the patio so quickly her heel snapped against the stone. She kicked off the ruined shoe without breaking stride, reached the edge, and dove.
Cold water closed over her head.
The bright noise of the party vanished.
Sarah sank, dress pulling against her legs, bubbles rushing past her face. She forced herself down and opened her eyes.
Left.
Nothing but white tile and wavering sunlight.
Right.
The submerged steps.
No Mia.
Sarah kicked lower.
Her lungs tightened almost immediately. She had entered without preparing, without taking a full breath, without thinking of anything except Zoe’s terrified face.
Under the pool.
Sarah turned downward.
The deep end sloped toward the far wall.
Nothing.
She searched again.
Left.
Right.
Down.
Her pulse hammered inside her skull.
No child.
No movement.
For one terrible instant Sarah wondered if Mia had somehow been trapped in the drainage system. The thought struck with enough force to make her almost surface.
Then she saw something.
Not a person.
A line.
A faint vertical seam where the bottom met the far underwater wall.
Sarah narrowed her eyes.
The pool tiles created hundreds of straight lines. This one was different.
It continued upward.
Then across.
Then down.
A square.
Sarah stopped kicking.
Several body-lengths separated her from the far wall.
There, built flush into the underwater structure, was a panel approximately three feet by three feet.
No decorative tile pattern explained it.
A faint perimeter marked all four sides.
And attached to the right half of the square was a single metal handle.
Sarah floated motionless.
She had lived in this house with Michael for three years.
She had swum in this pool dozens of times.
She had watched Mia learn to kick her legs in the shallow end.
Never once had anyone mentioned a door beneath the water.
Sarah stared at that handle.
Then she understood what Zoe had meant.
May you like
There really was something under the pool.
And Evelyn had known it was there.
