Chapter 4 - Sixty SecondsDiego thought he had trapped me out in the cold where no one could hear me scream.
He didn't realize he had locked himself inside a surveillance fortress built by a man who had made his fortune in defense logistics.
Suddenly, the outdoor floodlights around the perimeter of the patio burst on with blinding, ten-thousand-lumen intensity, turning the midnight darkness into daylight.
Diego flinched, shielding his eyes with his forearm. "What the—"
A static pop echoed through the heavy weather-proof speakers hidden beneath the patio overhang. Then came a voice. It wasn't loud, but it possessed a terrifying, absolute authority that froze the blood in Diego's veins.
"Diego."
Diego spun around toward the ceiling, his face turning the color of ash. "Al... Alvin?"
"You have sixty seconds to turn off that water and carry my daughter inside," my father’s voice rasped through the speaker. "If she is unconscious when the paramedics arrive, I will personally ruin every living member of your family."
Panic exploded across Diego’s face. He scrambled forward, slipping on the ice, and violently yanked the brass shower valve shut. The freezing spray cut off.
He dropped to his knees beside me, grabbing my wet, heavy shoulders.
"Clara! Clara, wake up!" he yelled, looking directly up into the camera lens with wide, terrified eyes. "She slipped, Alvin! It was an accident! She came out here to look at the stars and she slipped!"
My father’s voice returned, colder than the ice beneath my cheek.
"I watched you push her, Diego. I watched you stand there for six minutes."
Diego gasped, dragging my deadweight body off the wet stone and pulling me up into his arms. He stumbled through the patio doors into the warmth of the living room, collapsing with me onto the rug in front of the roaring stone fireplace.
Brenna rushed down the hallway in a silk robe, her face pale. "Diego! What is that noise?! Who were you talking to?!"
"Police are coming," Diego whispered, his hands trembling violently as he tried to strip my soaked sweater off my numb arms. "Alvin saw everything. He has cameras on the patio."
Brenna didn't cry. She didn't panic. Her eyes hardened into slits of pure steel. She stepped forward, grabbed Diego by his collar, and hissed in his ear:
"Then get the documents. Now! Before they get here!"
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Even through the hazy fog of my fading consciousness, shivering so hard my teeth were clicking together, I heard her.
Diego shoved me onto the floor and bolted up the stairs toward the study. Brenna followed right behind him.
