The Secret Friend by Chris Mooney Read Free Book Online

items such as furniture. The other two cameras kept watch on the garage door and the parking garage. If Emma’s abductor had, in fact, come back for the necklace, how did he manage to get through without being caught?
    Twenty minutes later, Marsh came out of his office. ‘Emma’s place is on the fifteenth floor,’ he said, handing Darby a set of keys.
    ‘Alarm?’
    Marsh glanced at a computer console. ‘It’s off. I think it’s been turned off for a while now.’
    ‘Is that unusual?’
    ‘I remember Mr Hale had it shut off when you people were running in and out of Emma’s place. You’ll need to talk to him about it.’
    ‘Did you speak to him?’
    ‘No, I spoke to his assistant, Abigail. She spoke to Mr Hale. He wanted you to know you have his full cooperation.’
    ‘I’d like Abigail’s number,’ Darby said. ‘I’ll collect it when I drop off the keys.’
    Darby rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor. She stepped into a dimly lit hallway containing two doors. At the end she saw a delivery elevator.
    Emma’s door was on the right. Darby unzipped her coat and then slipped on a pair of latex gloves. She checked the two locks and didn’t see any signs of forced entry. She unlocked the door, reached inside and found the light switch.
    Emma Hale’s home was two floors of blonde oak hardwood floors and windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. Darby was taken back by the enormous amount of space. The main room, twice the size of her condo, was magazine-showroom perfect, from the modern-type furniture and rugs to the Jackson Pollock-inspired oil paintings and knock-off Greek statues. The kitchen had black granite counter-tops, a Viking range and a Sub-Zero refrigerator. Nice living for a Harvard student.
    The air had a stale quality to it, and the heat was on, as though Emma was expected to return. Darby wanted to roam through the rooms to get to know Emma better. First, she needed to find out about the necklace.
    The master bedroom was most likely on the second floor. Darby climbed the spiral staircase. The penthouse, she had read, had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, one of which held a Jacuzzi tub and a plasma-screen TV. She was about to step into the hallway when the lights went out.

11
    Blackout, Darby thought. The snowstorm must have knocked out the building’s power.
    This wasn’t the winter’s first blackout. The endless cold days and even colder nights with their mean, freezing winds had knocked down power lines all over the city, sometimes for hours. Darby hoped that wasn’t the case here. She hadn’t brought a flashlight.
    She did, however, have some light. Directly across the hallway was a bedroom. The door was open, and Darby saw a large bay window overlooking Arlington Street and part of the Public Garden. The street lights were on, as were the lights for the Ritz Carlton. The hotel must have had a backup generator – no, wait, the lights were on in the brownstones across the street. The storm must have knocked down the power lines for this side of the street. Wonderful.
    Looking down the hallway, Darby saw another opened door; a dim rectangle of silver light spilled onto the hardwood floor and across the wall. She doubted the walk-in closet had windows. To examine the jewellery boxes would require a flashlight.
    Two choices: she could wait here in the dark until the lights came on or she could go back downstairs and see if Marsh had a flashlight she could borrow.
    Darby placed her hands on the railing and made her way down the stairs. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she could see well enough.
    The creak of a floorboard above her made her stop. Darby spun around, heart racing, and looked to the second-floor hallway. It was empty. She was alone.
    Darby moved up the steps, another part of her mind taking control, reminding her of the night over two decades ago when she was fifteen, leaning over the second-floor banister of her home and staring down into the semi-dark foyer