and almost ran from the room. The others sat very quietly now, listening to Simon move swiftly from room to room, calling the caretaker’s name.
“Leon! Leon!”
There was no answer, and no halt to the search.
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Andrew said. “Not good at all.”
Samantha heard a door slam, then saw a flash of movement beyond the great room’s windows. She stood up and peered out, into the night.
“Look,” she said. The others joined her at the window, just in time to see Simon disappear into the darkness, still calling Leon’s name, then reappear almost immediately, grim-faced as ever.
A moment later he was back in the great room. He turned to Hayden and said darkly, “I might be a while. Help them set the rendezvous coordinates for the Munro and then everyone— all of you—try to get some rest. We have to be down by the dock before five a.m.”
Ryan looked at his watch. It was half past one. He rushed over to the digital display and began to monitor the Munro’s activities halfway around the globe.
Simon left without another word. There was only one more place to look—the one place he had been thinking about and avoiding since the moment they’d set foot on Corsica.
Oliver’s private study.
He began to climb the stairs to the second floor as quickly as he could. Then, unaccountably, he found himself slowing, moving just as he had as a child, almost tip-toeing to the upper landing, creeping down the hall, and pausing before the study doors, his eyes locked on them, his heart pounding.
They were stout double doors made from oak, thick and lovingly crafted. The knobs were huge and ancient; the brass locking plate below polished and free of the slightest fingerprint.
An envelope was pinned to the center of both doors. Even from a distance, Simon could see what it displayed.
After ascending a few more steps closer to the door, eyes locked on the envelope, he recognized it. It was an unusual geometric symbol he had seen before. It looked like some sort of insignia.
He had not seen it in years. When he first noticed the geometric symbol at eight years of age, it was on Oliver’s briefcase. He had asked his father what it was, but had only gotten a vague response. For years it had remained in the vast pages of his childhood’s unresolved memories.
He felt something cold and hard sink in his stomach as he slowly approached the door. Each step felt like a dream as fear began to grip his body. Even his own legs seemed to weigh him down as he inched closer to the door. Simon, stop the paranoia, he told himself as he covered the last few steps. It’s time. It has to be time.
The wooden floor beneath his feet announced his approach with each new creak. For a moment—just for a moment!—he was absolutely positive his father was waiting on the other side of those doors, that he would open them and find Oliver Fitzpatrick sitting behind his massive oak desk, grinning and congratulating him on a job well done.
But that’s a lie, he told himself. He wanted it so badly to be true, but it wasn’t. His father was thousands of miles away, trapped in the loneliest continent on Earth. His father was waiting for him there, he knew—counting on him.
He stopped two feet from the double doors and gazed at the brass knobs…and saw, to his amazement, a small key inserted into the right lock—a key bearing the same insignia as the envelope he had not yet taken as his own. His heart started pounding. That key was never there before. That key granted him the access he needed. That key could open the doors to a secret fragment of his childhood that had haunted him for years.
He reached out and touched it, his stomach cramping with tension. He closed his eyes and knew the unknown world he longed to discover was only inches away.
Then, instantly as if controlled by some outside force, he opened his eyes and found himself staring at the note pinned in front of him, between both doors. He paused, staring, almost hypnotized.
Then he let go of the key and reached for the envelope, tearing it free of the two pins that had pushed it deep into the wood. He ripped open the envelope even as he heard Hayden’s voice from downstairs: “Rendezvous coordinates laid in. We’re good to go.”
The note was written with an unfamiliar hand and obviously