Immediately after exiting the breakfast room, Michaela ran upstairs to her room, grabbed her iPod Touch, and ran back into her father's study. She zoomed over to the desk, turned on the desk lamp and started searching in drawers. Ever since she could remember, her father left little treats and surprises for her in and around his desk. He admired President Kennedy and liked to emulate the way JFK left candy around the desk in the oval office for his son, John-John.

She practically jumped into the comfortably squishy desk chair that her father favored. She could smell chocolate from somewhere in the desk. After poking around for a few more seconds, she found a stash of Milky Way mini-bars in the top drawer. They weren't her favorite, but that didn't matter. The hunt and finding her quarry mattered the most! Besides, she liked coming in here. Just standing or sitting in the room made her feel important.

Her father didn't mind her finding treats in his desk, but he chided her more times than she could count that he didn't want her spending a lot of time in his office. He said he didn't like it when she messed up the papers on his desk or left her toys lying around on the floor of the office. Why doesn't he notice that I'm not eight years old anymore? she wondered. Fortunately, he likely hadn't left the dinner table yet, so she felt safe sitting in here for a few minutes. She tossed her iPod Touch on top of the desk, grabbed a bar, and ripped off the wrapper. Chewing slowly on the chocolate-covered caramel confection, she sat back in the chair and swung it around to face the lawn.

Night fell, and the lights along the shore of Long Island Sound dotted the landscape in the background. A small pair of lights made its way right-to-left, probably a fishing boat seeking port. The estate spread out far enough away from the lights of the city that she saw stars filling the clear night sky. The North Star glittered directly ahead above the horizon. She tried to spot the dock and the boats at the end of the lawn, but it had turned too dark to see anything that far away clearly.

She saw something else instead. A shadow shaped like a person moved slowly and evenly across the lawn. She jumped up thinking she should call Mr. Donahue, her father's chief of estate security, when she saw him stride from the house directly toward the dark figure. She turned and extinguished the desk lamp. The figure halted and waited as Mr. Donahue approached him. The unseen stranger didn't seem to fear the meeting. To the contrary, he acted as if he expected it.

The two men (she presumed the other person was a man) came together and stood still for quite a while. They undoubtedly talked, but she could see no motion, and with the window closed she could hear no voices. She crept over to the window, and opened it as quietly as she could. Now she heard their voices, but she still couldn't make out anything they said. Suddenly their conversation ended, and the other man strolled away toward the bushes on the right.

Mr. Donahue walked briskly back toward the house. She thought about calling out to him to ask what had happened, but something about his manner changed her mind. She decided that he might resent her butting into his business. Mr. Donahue behaved stiffly toward her most of the time. Her father claimed that Mr. Donahue had the best skills for the job, but his cold and calculating attitude toward her put her off; she didn't trust him.

As he approached the building, he didn't look up but merely walked to the side and out of sight. He never noticed her standing there. She closed the window and climbed back into her father's chair, turning the desk lamp on.

She considered Mr. Donahue's behavior very strange. Whom had he met, and why had they met out on the lawn at night? The scene seemed drawn from an Agatha Christie novel. She froze suddenly. I wonder if there's going to be a murder or something! There's always a murder in the Christie novels.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she lacked enough information to go on. She filed the incident in the back of her head, climbed back out of the chair, and picked up her iPod from her father's desk, intending to leave the room.

She didn't mean to pick up the manuscript that lay beneath the iPod on the desk, but she realized her mistake pretty quickly. She started to drop it back on the desk, but something about it grabbed her attention. She contemplated the title. It read, “Free Banking In America As It Relates To Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island: A Study of the Federal Reserve System and Its Role in Modern Monetary Policy.”

What a long title! She expected to find a reference or two to banking in it, but the reference to a creature surprised her. It reminded her of some kind of Godzilla-like movie character. And where was Jekyll Island?

Her curiosity aroused, she made a quick decision. She knew she'd better not stay in her father's study if she didn't want to get in trouble, so she ran back to her room, carrying the manuscript. She closed the door behind her, threw her iPod on the bed, plopped herself onto the bed, and began to read.

She didn't understand a lot of it, but it read a little like a mystery novel—a weird mix of Agatha Christie and a course syllabus from some university economics department.

Suddenly a knock sounded on the door.

Michaela called out, slightly alarmed, “Who is it?”

Lizzie's voice came from the other side: “It's me.”

Instantly, Michaela jammed the manuscript under her pillow and said, “Come on in.”

The door opened, and Lizzie poked her head around the door, scanned the room quickly, and came in. Michaela didn't behave like a “girly girl,” but her room displayed a decidedly feminine touch. Like all the rooms in the house, it struck her as enormously spacious. A large four-poster queen-size bed in pinks and off-whites filled part of the space. Two sheer swags formed a sort of arch above the bed, with the word MICHAELA spelled out in large letters in a quilt-like arrangement on the wall above the headboard, each letter occupying one square of the pseudo-quilt. Big, soft, fluffy pillows and stuffed animals covered the bed. A comfortable couch sat by one wall, and a large, modern bookcase dominated the opposite wall. The wall opposite the bed bore a large, personally signed portrait of heartthrob Zac Efron. It read, “For my friend Michaela” and then in big, sweeping letters, “Zac”.

“Ah, there you are,” said Lizzie. “Your father and I had a little chat, and I agreed to cut down on our discussions about banking as it relates to your studies. So I need you to do me a favor. I need you to promise me that you won't keep asking me banking questions as we study.”

The corners of Michaela's mouth turned down. She wanted to understand her father's world, and he and her tutor conspired to prevent her! She decided to just sit there and not say anything.

After a moment of silence, Lizzie said, “You didn't answer me.”

“You didn't ask me a question,” replied Michaela with only a slight tinge of tartness. On this rare occasion she decided upon deliberate stubbornness.

“Listen, Michaela, I don't want to give you a hard time about this. To be honest, in this case I don't want to follow your father's orders at all, but I work for him. You don't have to like it, but we have to do it.”

Michaela didn't say anything but she sat there mutinously. She stared at the blanket on her bed, refusing to meet Lizzie's eyes.

“I'll say goodnight then,” said Lizzie, as she turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

Michaela jumped up from the bed, walked over to the door, and locked it. She went back to the bed and pulled the manuscript out from beneath her pillow. She read some more of it, but it didn't make much sense to her. She finally gave up and got up to unlock the door, manuscript in hand. Opening the door quietly, she crept down the hall toward her father's study. She tip-toed inside the darkened room and slowly pulled the door closed. She walked softly over to the desk, gently laid the manuscript on top, and turned to walk back toward the door.

Suddenly, a shadow moved by the wall. Michaela started with a sharp intake of breath.

“Who's there?” she asked. The shadow moved as fast as a cat’s paw, and a cloth-covered hand grabbed her roughly over her mouth. An arm circled her middle, knocking her off balance. She struggled, but as she did she breathed in heavily and smelled something like alcohol and nail polish remover. Another breath and the room receded into a murky distance. Within seconds she ceased to struggle and blacked out.