Chapter 5

The security room was three floors below the lobby, a windowless box lined with monitors and humming server racks. Elliot had never been inside it before—access required a manager-level badge, and Victoria had ensured he never received one—but Lucas's gold COO badge cleared both the door and the silence of the overnight security supervisor, a heavyset man named Ruiz who had been with the hotel for eighteen years and had seen every kind of late-night crisis.

"The cameras," Elliot said, pointing at a bank of screens, "cover the lobby from four angles. But there's a five-second gap between the west wing camera sweep and the north wing sweep. The champagne bar sits in that gap."

Ruiz nodded slowly. "The blind spot. Yeah, we know about it. Miss Alvarado told us not to worry about it because the bar is staffed at all times. The bartender would see anything."

"The bartender," Elliot said, "is Alejandro. He's the one who told me about the broken flute. He saw the tray tip."

Lucas leaned over the console. "Pull up the footage from the last twenty minutes. Every angle. And the audio, if we have it."

Ruiz's fingers moved across the keyboard. The screens flickered, and then the lobby appeared—a wide shot from above the chandelier, guests in evening wear moving through the marble space, and at the far left edge, a silver wheelchair rolling through the glass doors.

"There's the chairman's entrance," Lucas said. "Time it."

Elliot watched the screen. Richard's wheelchair moved slowly through the lobby, pushed by—no, not pushed. Richard was propelling himself, his thin hands gripping the rim of the wheels, moving with the careful economy of a man who didn't want help. He paused at the champagne table, looked at the crystal, then turned his chair toward the corner, out of the flow of guests.

Victoria appeared at the edge of the frame. She was talking to a guest—Harold Vane, Elliot realized—and her smile was bright, practiced. She laughed at something Vane said. Then her gaze drifted to the wheelchair, and the smile faltered.

"Watch her face," Elliot said. "Right there. That's the moment she decided."

On the screen, Victoria's expression shifted from professional warmth to cold assessment. She looked at Richard—at his worn jacket, his scuffed shoes, the wheelchair that was plain and unremarkable—and Elliot saw her dismiss him as something that had wandered in from the street. She excused herself from Vane and began walking toward the champagne table.

"Audio," Lucas said.

Ruiz tapped a key. The speakers crackled, and then the lobby's ambient sound filled the room—the murmur of guests, the clink of glass, and a voice, clear and sharp: "He's sitting by the champagne table. Who let him in?"