Chapter 7: What Mateo Knew
The photograph was of Beatrice.
Not from tonight.
Not from the cellar or the hallway or any moment in this house.
It was older — two, maybe three years.
She was outside a coffee shop in a coat Mateo didn't recognize, carrying a paper bag, looking at something off-camera.
She was laughing.
Someone had been watching her long before tonight.
Mateo sat with the phone in his hand for a full minute.
Then he stood up, walked to the kitchen, and found Leo standing at the counter with a second cup of tea he hadn't touched.
"Sit down," Mateo said.
Leo looked at him.
He sat.
Mateo put the phone on the table between them.
Leo looked at the photograph.
His expression didn't change, but his hand, resting on the table, went very still.
"When was this taken?" Leo asked.
"Metadata says two years and four months ago." Mateo sat across from him.
"Three months before Elena d*ed."
The two men looked at each other.
"They were watching the household staff," Leo said.
"They were watching everyone connected to you.
Cataloguing.
Building files." Mateo leaned forward.
"Leo, if they have a file on Beatrice going back that far, they know things about her we don't.
Family.
History.
Anything they could use."
"Use how?"
"As leverage.
The same way they used Lily." Mateo kept his voice even.
"If Kensington thinks threatening Beatrice directly isn't enough — if he thinks she'll go anyway — he'll look for something she cares about.
Someone."
Leo was quiet.
"Does she have family?" Mateo asked.
"I don't know." Leo said it like it cost him something.
"I don't know enough about her."
"Find out.
Before we put her on that plane."
Leo stood.
He walked to the base of the stairs and looked up.
The house was quiet.
Somewhere above them, a drawer opened and closed — Lily, packing her drawing things.
"She'll say she doesn't have anyone," Leo said.
"She'll say it to protect them."
"I know." Mateo stood too.
"Which is why you need to ask her before she has time to prepare the answer."
Leo went upstairs.
He knocked on Lily's bedroom door.
Lily opened it, already holding a fistful of colored pencils, and said, "Daddy, Bee says I can bring my drawing things," with the confidence of someone who considers the matter fully settled.
"Good," he said.
"Can I borrow Bee for one minute?"
Lily considered this.
"One minute," she said seriously, and went back to her packing.
Beatrice appeared in the doorway.
She looked at his face and immediately looked past him, checking the hallway, the stairs, the angles.
"What happened?" she said.
"Come with me."
He took her to the small sitting room at the end of the hall — the one nobody used, the one with the window seat and the old lamp that had needed a new bulb for six months.
He closed the door.
"Mateo received a photograph," he said.
"Of you.
Taken two years ago.
Before Elena d*ed."
Beatrice went very still.
"They've had a file on you," he said.
"For years.
Which means they may know things about you that they can use." He looked at her directly.
"Is there anyone, Beatrice?
Family.
A friend.
Anyone they could go to."
She looked at the window.
The grey light was turning gold now, slowly, the sun finally deciding to arrive.
"My mother," she said.
"She lives in Coventry.
She's seventy-one.
She has a bad hip and a garden she can't stop fussing over." A pause.
"She doesn't know anything about this family or this house.
She thinks I work for a hotel management company."
"Does she live alone?"
"Yes.
My father passed eight years ago."
Leo pulled out his phone.
"I'm sending someone to her today.
Not to alarm her.
Just to be present."
Beatrice turned from the window.
"She'll ask questions."
"Tell her it's a security upgrade.
A service the company provides." He looked at her.
"She won't be in danger if we move now."
"You don't know that."
"No," he said.
"I don't.
But I know what happens when we do nothing." He held her gaze.
"I should have protected Elena better.
I didn't see what was in front of me.
I am not going to make that mistake again."
The room was very quiet.
"Her name is Dorothy," Beatrice said.
"Dorothy Miller.
She'll offer whoever you send a cup of tea and a biscuit and she will absolutely not take no for an answer."
"I'll warn them."
The corner of Beatrice's mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
Something that had once been a smile and remembered how.
"She'll like having someone in the house," Beatrice said softly.
"She's been alone a long time."
Leo made the call right there, in the small sitting room with the broken lamp, while Beatrice stood at the window and watched the gold come into the sky.
When he ended the call, she turned around.
"Two men will be at her door within the hour," he said.
Beatrice nodded.
She moved toward the door.
"Beatrice." He stopped her for the second time that morning.
"When this is over — when Lily is safe and Kensington is finished — I want to talk to you.
About your position here.
About what you're owed."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Let's get Lily to Italy first," she said.
She opened the door and went back to the packing.
May you like
But in the driveway below, a black car had been sitting with its engine off for twenty minutes.
And the man behind the wheel was not one of Leo's.
