Graham had spent most of the night pretending he could hear it.

For nearly four months, sound had been slipping away from him. It began with a faint ringing after dinner. Then conversations became distorted, as if everyone were speaking through several inches of water.

Some mornings he slept through alarms loud enough to wake the housekeeper downstairs.

Three specialists had examined him. None could explain it. Stress, they said. Exhaustion. Possibly an unusual autoimmune condition. Vanessa had come to every appointment.

She’d held his hand in waiting rooms and asked the doctors careful questions. At night she prepared herbal tea and reminded him to rest.

“You’re thirty-six, not seventy-six,” she had teased the first time he admitted he was frightened. Graham laughed because she expected him to.

He had built Mercer Ridge Technologies from a rented office above a tire shop into a software company valued at nearly six billion dollars. He had negotiated hostile acquisitions, survived a federal investigation caused by a former executive, and once closed a deal while his appendix was rupturing.

He was not supposed to be frightened by a ringing in his ears.

But that night, during the toast to his future marriage, the ballroom had gone almost completely silent. Graham stood before two hundred people, watching their mouths move while hearing only a low mechanical hum.

Vanessa squeezed his hand. He smiled and continued speaking from memory. No one noticed.

At least, he thought no one had.

Chapter 2 — The Child on the Step

After the toast, Graham escaped through the French doors to the garden. The cold November air struck his face, bringing relief. Beyond the terrace, moonlight trembled across the lake.