Chapter 17: The Midnight Search
The digital clock set flush into the bedside console clicked over to two in the morning, its pale numbers casting a thin square of green across the polished floorboards of the guest suite. Piper lay stiff beneath the heavy down comforter, staring at the smooth ceiling panels while her ears strained against the absolute silence of Alderwood Manor. In the unheated tenements down on 4th Avenue, night always carried the rattles of coughing neighbors, the groaning of ancient plumbing, and the sharp hiss of sleet against single pane glass. Here, buried beneath three feet of reinforced concrete and high grade insulation, there was only the faint, steady breath of the air circulation vents.
She had spent three hours counting every breath, her heart hammering again
