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The fabric softener in the laundry room suddenly smelled nauseatingly sweet, like crushed petals over a freshly dug grave. Rosa held Lily so tightly her knuckles turned white, her mind racing through the terrifying architecture of the Whitmore estate. / Chapter 5 / 8

Chapter 5 - THE ESCAPE HATCH

“Rosa. I know you’re in there.”

Charles’s deep, gravelly voice cut through the silence of the room like a knife.

There was no time to use the door. Panicking, Rosa scanned her tiny room. The window looked out over a sheer, thirty-foot drop into the jagged rocks of the coastal cliff below. There was no escape that way.

Then she remembered the old architectural blueprints the former head housekeeper had shown her during her first week: an old coal chute hidden behind the pantry shelving that connected the servants' quarters directly to the old carriage house down by the sea.

“Lily, hold onto my neck as tight as you can, okay? Don't let go,” Rosa whispered fiercely, scooping her daughter up in one arm while grabbing the duffel bag with the other.

Just as the bedroom door crashed open, splintering the frame, Rosa hauled open the false wall panel in the corner of the pantry closet and plunged backward into the darkness of the chute.

Thump! Scrape!

They slid down the steep, metallic tunnel in a rush of dust and stale air, tumbling out into the damp, abandoned shadows of the old stone carriage house.

Above them, muffled shouts echoed from the bedroom.

“They went through the wall! Find them! Don't let them reach the main road!”

Rosa scrambled to her feet, clutching Lily, who was whimpering in fright. The carriage house was filled with rotting buggies and cobwebs, but through the rusted iron double doors, Rosa could see the salvation: the old maintenance dirt road that wound down the cliffside toward the village bus station five miles away.

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She threw open the iron doors. The freezing ocean wind whipped her hair across her face as she stepped out into the pouring rain that had just begun to fall.

They ran. Through the mud, through the stinging sleet, through the pitch-black night, driven by the absolute terror of what would happen if they were caught.

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