Blinking In The Clock

“Mr. Moretti.”

Emma stood in the study doorway with her stuffed rabbit hanging by one ear. She was barefoot. The toe of one foot was dark with garden dirt.

Aleandro looked up from the desk. The room held the old clock in the corner, the leather chair, the map of the harbor spread under a brass weight.

“Yes.”

She pointed. “There’s a bug in your clock.”

He did not move at first.

Emma crossed the rug in two quick steps and pointed higher, toward the carved wood case. “It’s blinking like the bug on Mama’s tomato vine. Greeny. Tiny.”

Aleandro set down the pen. His cheek tightened once.

“Show me.”

She came closer, still clutching the rabbit. “Up there. It hides in the dark.”

He took her hand, careful not to crush the toy. The back of the grandfather clock had a slight seam near the panel, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. A pinprick of green pulsed through the crack.

Vincent Russo was already in motion before Aleandro spoke.

“Kill the room,” Aleandro said.

Russo reached for the lamp switch. The study dropped into one pool of daylight from the windows and the faint green blink behind the clock wood.

“Seal the floor,” Aleandro said. “No one in. No one out.”

Russo nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

“Take the hall cameras. Find who entered this room in the last week.”

“On it.”

“Check the elevator log. The garden path. The service corridor.”

Russo was gone in the same second.

Emma watched the door. “Did I do bad?”

Aleandro crouched so they were eye to eye. His voice stayed low.

“No.”

“Is it a toy bug?”

“No.”

“Then it’s mean.”

He looked at the clock again. “Yes.”

Emma hugged the rabbit to her chest.

He touched two fingers to the side of her wrist, a quick check that she was steady. “You tell no one else what you saw. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Not Mama. Not anyone.”

“Not even Sophia?”

“Not even Sophia.”

Emma swallowed. “Why?”

“Because some people listen where they are not invited.”

She thought about that, then said, “Like bad mice.”

“Like that.”

The house had gone still. Even the grandfather clock seemed to hold its breath.

Aleandro stood and opened the clock door. The old hinges gave a dry click. Inside, behind the brass works and the carved pendulum mount, the device sat wedged in black foam, small enough to fit in his palm. Its green light winked once more.

He took it out.

The metal was warm.

He closed the panel, turned the key, and reset the clock hands to the correct minute with two clean turns.

Then he put the device in his pocket.

Emma stared up at him. “What happens now?”

Aleandro glanced once at the hall where men were already moving.

“Now,” he said, “we wait.”

He set the clock back to silence and listened to its steady tick begin again.