Chapter 1 - The Empty Ladder
The first thing Graham Mercer would remember was the sound.
Not the slap. Not his mother's screaming. Not even the words that came afterward.
It was the sound his seven-year-old son made when Graham reached for him.
A small, terrified gasp.
As if his own father had become someone to fear.
Twenty seconds earlier, everything had looked different.
The afternoon sun lay bright across the swimming pool behind the Mercer family mansion in suburban Pennsylvania. Wesley Mercer, seven years old, sandy-haired and proudly wearing the blue swim trunks he'd picked out himself, was paddling toward the shallow end.
His grandmother watched from a cushioned chair.
Marjorie Mercer was seventy, with a silver bob that never seemed to lose its shape and a cream cardigan folded neatly around her narrow shoulders. She had spent most of her adult life being described as gracious.
People used other words when she wasn't in the room.
Formidable.
Controlling.
Impossible.
Wesley had a different word.
Grandma.
He trusted her.
That was what made the next twenty seconds possible.
Marjorie looked toward the mansion. The glass doors stood closed.
She checked the garden path on the left.
Empty.
Then the driveway beyond the rear wall.
Nothing.
She rose.
The aluminum pool ladder stood at the near-right edge, fitted into quick-release deck sockets. Graham had installed it after Wesley complained that the wide built-in steps at the opposite end were too far away when he wanted to climb out near his grandmother's chair.
Marjorie wrapped both hands around the rails, released the fittings, and lifted.
The ladder came free.
She carried it behind the short service wall at the rear-right corner, where it couldn't be seen from the water.
When she returned to her chair, two empty sockets were all that remained.
Wesley hadn't noticed.
He was busy pretending he was a submarine captain, kicking his feet and making silent explosions beneath the water.
Marjorie sat down.
Her mouth curved.
Not a broad smile. Nothing a visitor walking past would necessarily catch.
Just a private expression of satisfaction.
Then Wesley reached the place where his ladder should have been.
His right hand swept through empty air.
He blinked.
Tried again.
Nothing.
He grabbed the concrete coping and kicked harder, expecting his toes to find the bottom rung.
They found only water.
He tried hauling himself upward. His elbows slipped against the wet stone. His chest struck the edge, and he slid backward.
Suddenly the pool seemed much deeper.
His feet churned.
His eyes widened.
He looked toward his grandmother's chair.
Marjorie was watching.
For one long, incomprehensible moment, she did not move.
Wesley tried again.
His arms trembled. His mouth opened, and a frightened cry broke across the water.
Beyond the hedge, Travis Bennett heard it.
Travis was thirty-six, a broad-shouldered civil engineer with brown hair that always looked as though he'd just run his fingers through it. He lived in the modest brick house beside the Mercer property, a place inherited from his aunt, and he was walking up his left-side garden path when the cry reached him.
He turned.
Saw the boy struggling.
Dropped what he was carrying.
And ran.
His shoes hammered the stone deck.
He planted his feet beside the empty ladder sockets, dropped into a crouch, and reached down.
His hands closed around Wesley's forearms.
The child clung to him desperately.
Travis pulled until Wesley's elbows reached the deck, shifted his grip to support the boy's chest, then leaned backward, bringing Wesley's hips and legs over the coping.
Water streamed across the stones.
Wesley landed completely clear of the pool.
Travis dropped onto his knees and wrapped both arms around him.
The boy sobbed against his gray shirt.
"You're okay," Travis almost said.
But before he could get the words out, footsteps thundered from the mansion.
Graham Mercer came through the rear-left doors.
Forty years old, dark-haired, wearing the navy polo he'd put on that morning for a meeting with the bank, Graham had spent the past year sleeping badly and working too much.
He saw his son crying.
He saw a man holding him.
And he made a decision without understanding a single thing about what had happened.
He charged across the deck.
Travis looked up.
Graham swung.
His open palm struck Travis across the face.
The crack cut through the afternoon.
"Get your hands off my son!"
Travis rocked sideways, stunned.
Wesley screamed harder.
From her chair, Marjorie rose.
She hurried over, one hand pressed theatrically against her chest, her expression changing so completely that anyone who hadn't seen her smile a moment before might have believed she was horrified.
She pointed straight at Travis.
"He tried to hurt your boy!"
Graham's face darkened.
Travis stared at her.
He had expected panic. Confusion, maybe. Gratitude would have been nice, although he'd never been the sort of man who needed applause.
He had not expected this.
His cheek burned.
A thin metallic taste spread across his tongue where he'd bitten it.
Then something caught his eye.
High on the back wall of the mansion, angled down toward the pool, hung a security camera.
Travis looked at it.
Slowly, he lifted one hand and pointed.
Then he turned toward Graham and Marjorie.
"When the cops get here, you two are gonna regret this!"
The words hung over the wet stone.
Graham looked toward the camera.
Marjorie looked at Travis.
And for the first time that afternoon, her expression changed into something real.
Fear.
May you like
Because she had arranged for that camera not to record.
What she didn't know was whether the camera had obeyed.
