LADYBUG, LADYBUG, FLY AWAY HOME. ... YOUR house is on fire, and your children will burn. ...”
After listening to Call 51, Ethan had no doubt that some of the first fifty recordings also contained messages of value to him, but he did not think he dared take time to review them, and he knew that he didn’t need to hear them in order to solve the riddle.
Twenty-two ladybugs. The twenty-second of December.
Today. And only a little more than three hours remained until the calender turned to December 23. If something terrible were going to happen, it would occur soon.
His pistol was in his apartment.
By now Fric must be waiting there, as well.
He fled the white room, leaving the blue door open behind him.
No need to panic. The perimeter alarm would shriek at the first breach of door or window. Between wails of the siren, a voice module would announce, in a clear computerized voice, the room in which the break-in had occurred.
Besides, the men in the security office would know the moment anyone crossed the estate wall, long before an intruder could reach [546] the house. At the first evidence that the property had been violated, they would call 911 and the private armed-response security firm.
Nevertheless, with no time for the elevator, first to the back stairs in a sprint, then down six flights, down and around he went in a thunder, slamming through the door at the bottom of the stairs, into the ground-floor west wing.
He threw open the door to his apartment, called to Fric, and got no answer.
Evidently the boy was still in the library. Not good. He had gotten through ten years of life alone more often than not, but he wouldn’t make it through this night by himself.
Ethan hurried to the desk in the study. He had left the pistol in the top right-hand drawer.
Pulling open the drawer, he expected to find that the gun had been taken. But there it was. A beautiful thing.
As Ethan slipped into the shoulder holster, he surveyed the items on top of the desk, between the com............