The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Clara

I called the cheap phone.

It rang somewhere in the house.

I followed the sound upstairs, to Clara's old bedroom, Paisley's now.

It was ringing in the bottom of a wastebasket, under a wad of tissues.

Paisley had found it after all.

The housekeeper was already coming up the drive in her coat, half running.

"A car came at four," she said. "I heard the gate. I thought it was her coming back."

"Who?"

"Him. And two of his men. They went in the front." She pressed her hand to her chest. "Clara walked out between them. She had her sketchbook. She wasn't fighting. She looked back at the boathouse once."

At the boathouse.

Where I'd been asleep, with my phone face up and silent, two hundred yards away.

"The night man opened the gate for them," the housekeeper said. "He didn't call anyone."

Matthias came up the lawn with his shirt half buttoned.

He looked at my face and didn't ask.

My own phone rang at six fifteen.

It was the night manager of our hotel on Park Avenue, a careful man who'd worked for me eleven years.

"Mrs. Oberlin. I'm sorry to call so early. Mr. Keel checked into the penthouse at five this morning, with your daughter."

I sat down on the stairs.

"He told the desk she's unwell and not to be disturbed. He left a doctor's letter with us. There are two men outside her door. Mr. Keel has gone to the tower."

"Is she all right?"

"She ordered nothing. She asked the bellman what day it was." He paused. "I thought you'd want to know before anyone else did."

Twelve floors above my suite.

He'd put her twelve floors above my own bed.

Matthias drove. It took fifty minutes and he didn't speak once, and neither did I.

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