Chapter 8
I screamed at Linda.
I don’t remember deciding to.
One second I was standing in the hallway.
The next I was trying to get past two officers.
“WHERE IS MY SON?”
Linda pressed herself against the hospital stretcher.
“I don’t know!”
“You know everything!”
“Emily!”
Ryan grabbed me.
I fought him.
“Let me go!”
“You can’t help Noah from jail.”
That stopped me.
Barely.
Officer Martinez stepped between me and Linda.
“Emily, look at me.”
I couldn’t.
“Look at me.”
I forced my eyes toward her.
“We do not know that anyone took them.”
“Her car was abandoned!”
“I know.”
“Noah is six!”
“I know.”
“Find him!”
“We are.”
She ordered Linda transported under police supervision.
Then she moved us into the living room.
“Tell me exactly what Rachel said before hanging up.”
I repeated it.
She was leaving.
Going somewhere public.
No destination specified.
Ryan called Rachel over and over.
Straight to voicemail.
I called too.
Nothing.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
My blood froze.
A photograph arrived.
Noah.
Sitting on a chair.
Alive.
Terrified.
His hands were tied in front of him with a plastic zip tie.
Behind him was a plain concrete wall.
I stopped breathing.
Ryan saw it.
“Oh God.”
A message appeared.
BRING THE PRICE FILE.
Officer Martinez looked over my shoulder.
Another message.
RYAN COMES ALONE.
Then another.
NO POLICE.
I started shaking so violently I could barely hold the phone.
“Where’s Rachel?” I typed.
Martinez caught my wrist.
“Don’t respond yet.”
“That’s my son.”
“We need to trace—”
Another photo.
Rachel lying on the floor.
Her eyes closed.
I made a sound I had never heard before.
Ryan took the phone from me.
“She’s breathing,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
Officer Martinez called in the kidnapping immediately.
The room filled with police.
Questions.
Phones.
Radios.
I wanted all of them gone.
I wanted all of them working faster.
I wanted my son.
A technician examined the messages.
Spoofed number.
No obvious location data.
Then an audio file arrived.
Ryan hit play.
Noah’s voice.
“Mommy?”
I covered my mouth.
A man spoke behind him.
“Tell her.”
“I want to come home.”
“Tell her what happens if police come.”
Noah started crying.
The man’s voice hardened.
“Tell her.”
“He says Aunt Rachel gets hurt.”
The recording ended.
Ryan threw a chair across the room.
Officer Martinez grabbed his shoulders.
“Control yourself.”
“That’s my son!”
“And I need you thinking.”
He shoved both hands through his hair.
“What file does he want?”
“The Price file,” I said.
Thomas Price’s envelope.
Ryan had brought it from the coffee shop.
Officer Martinez frowned.
“Where is it?”
Ryan looked around.
“In my car.”
She sent an officer to retrieve it.
I stared at the photo of Noah.
His dinosaur shirt.
One shoelace untied.
His face wet from tears.
My baby.
“I’m going,” Ryan said.
“No.”
Everyone looked at me.
He stepped closer.
“Emily.”
“He asked for you alone because he wants you isolated.”
“If that gets Noah back—”
“He may kill you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“He’s my son.”
“He’s mine too.”
Ryan grabbed my hands.
“Then let me do this.”
I stared at him.
For years I had wanted him to choose us over Linda.
Now he was ready to walk into a trap.
I hated the price of finally getting what I wanted.
Officer Martinez said, “Nobody is going anywhere until we have a location.”
The next message gave us one.
An abandoned storage facility near Irving.
Unit 114.
Midnight.
We had three hours.
Police began planning.
Ryan was wired.
A tactical team would remain out of sight.
The envelope would be copied.
A tracker hidden inside it.
Every detail sounded reasonable.
Every detail terrified me.
At ten thirty, Thomas Price called.
Ryan answered.
“Did you contact anyone named Mercer?”
“No.”
“Someone broke into my house.”
Ryan looked at Martinez.
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“Are you safe?”
“I’m at a neighbor’s.”
“What did they take?”
Thomas hesitated.
“The original file.”
Ryan’s face changed.
“You gave us copies?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My father kept the original in a safe.”
“And it’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“So why does Daniel still want ours?”
Thomas went silent.
Then said, “Maybe because there’s something in your copies he doesn’t know about.”
Ryan opened the envelope on the table.
We went through every page.
Settlement draft.
Bank records.
Letters.
Photograph.
Nothing obvious.
Then I noticed the envelope itself.
“Wait.”
The brown paper felt unusually thick.
I ran my fingers along the bottom.
There was a seam.
Ryan looked at me.
“What?”
I tore the inner lining carefully.
A tiny flash drive fell onto the table.
Everyone froze.
Thomas whispered through the phone.
“My father.”
Officer Martinez picked it up with gloves.
“Do you know what’s on this?”
“No.”
The police technician connected it to an isolated laptop.
One folder.
CHARLES.
Inside were audio files.
Dozens.
Dates from the final year of Charles’s life.
Ryan clicked the earliest.
His father’s voice filled the room.
Weak.
Tired.
But unmistakable.
“If you’re hearing this, something happened before I could fix what I allowed.”
Ryan sat down.
The recording continued.
“I spent my life believing silence protected Ryan.”
Ryan closed his eyes.
“I was wrong.”
Charles talked about Daniel.
The affair.
The paternity secret.
The blackmail.
Then the business.
Daniel had been stealing.
Charles found evidence.
He planned to report him.
Then Charles became sick.
The cancer was real.
But his health declined faster than doctors expected.
He began suspecting his medication was being altered.
My skin crawled.
Another recording.
“If Linda is involved, I don’t know willingly or through fear.”
Another.
“Daniel threatened Ryan.”
Another.
“He said if I went to police, my son would lose more than an inheritance.”
Ryan was crying silently.
Then we reached the final recording.
Dated four days before Charles died.
His breathing was rough.
“Linda came to see me tonight.”
Ryan leaned closer.
“She knows.”
Silence on the recording.
“She knows what Daniel has been putting in my medication.”
My entire body went cold.
Ryan stopped breathing.
Charles continued.
“She promised she would help me.”
A cough.
“But I saw her leave with him.”
Ryan stood.
“No.”
The recording continued.
“If I don’t wake up tomorrow, Ryan needs to know this.”
Another long pause.
“Linda chose Daniel.”
Ryan ripped the headphones away.
He looked like he had been struck.
Then something crashed at the front door.
Officers drew their weapons.
A package had been thrown onto the porch.
Inside was Rachel’s purse.
Her phone.
And a note.
MIDNIGHT.
NO GAMES.
I looked at the clock.
11:14.
Forty-six minutes.
Officer Martinez moved quickly.
Then Linda’s voice came from behind us.
“Don’t go to the storage unit.”
We turned.
She stood in the hallway.
No paramedics.
No escort.
Just Linda.
Officer Martinez reached for her weapon.
“How did you get back in here?”
Linda raised her hands.
“I slipped away from the hospital.”
“You’re making a serious mistake.”
“No.”
She looked at Ryan.
“You are.”
He stared at her with hatred.
“You knew Dad’s medicine was being altered.”
She started crying.
“Ryan.”
“You knew.”
“I was afraid.”
“He asked you for help.”
“Daniel said he would kill you.”
“So you let him kill Dad?”
“No!”
The word tore out of her.
“I changed the pills back.”
Ryan froze.
“What?”
“I switched them.”
“You just said—”
“Daniel discovered it.”
She covered her face.
“The night Charles died, Daniel went back.”
“Were you there?”
She nodded.
Ryan looked sick.
“Did you stop him?”
“No.”
“Then you chose him.”
“I chose you!”
“How?”
“Daniel said if I called police, he’d kill you too!”
Ryan laughed through tears.
“So you helped bury everything for twenty-nine years.”
“I kept you alive.”
“And now he has Noah.”
Linda looked at me.
For the first time, I saw guilt.
Real guilt.
“He won’t be at the storage unit.”
Officer Martinez stepped closer.
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s what he does.”
“What?”
“He gives one location and watches from another.”
“Where would he actually take them?”
Linda looked at Ryan.
“There was one place Charles never knew about.”
“Where?”
“Daniel’s old equipment warehouse.”
She gave an address near Grand Prairie.
Officer Martinez immediately radioed it.
Then Linda said, “There’s a basement.”
My heart stopped.
“Is that where Noah is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
She looked at the photo on my phone.
Then whispered, “The walls are concrete.”
We were moving within seconds.
Police ordered Ryan not to go.
He ignored them.
I did too.
The warehouse looked abandoned from the street.
No cars.
No lights.
Tactical officers entered first.
We waited behind cover.
Every second felt like a year.
Then gunshots cracked from inside.
I screamed Noah’s name.
Officers held us back.
More shouting.
Then silence.
A radio crackled.
“One suspect down.”
My heart pounded.
“Hostages located.”
I stopped breathing.
Then came the words I needed.
“Child alive.”
I collapsed against Ryan.
But the radio wasn’t finished.
“Adult female critical.”
Rachel.
I started running before anyone gave permission.
Inside, I found Noah wrapped in a police jacket.
The second he saw me, he screamed.
“Mommy!”
I dropped to my knees.
He ran into me.
I held him so tightly he cried harder.
“I knew you’d come.”
“I will always come.”
Ryan wrapped both of us in his arms.
For a few seconds, nothing else existed.
Then I saw paramedics rushing past.
Rachel lay on a stretcher.
Blood covered the side of her head.
I reached for her hand.
“Rachel!”
Her eyes fluttered.
“Em?”
“I’m here.”
“Noah?”
“He’s safe.”
She smiled weakly.
Then lost consciousness.
Behind us, officers brought a man out in handcuffs.
Tall.
Gray hair.
Blood on his shoulder.
Daniel Mercer.
Ryan looked up.
Their eyes met.
The resemblance was undeniable.
Daniel smiled.
Even wounded.
Even surrounded by police.
He smiled at Ryan like they were sharing a private joke.
Then he said, “You really think this ends with me?”
Ryan stepped forward.
Officers blocked him.
Daniel laughed.
“You still don’t know who helped me.”
Officer Martinez pushed him toward the patrol car.
But Daniel turned his head.
His eyes moved past Ryan.
Past me.
May you like
Toward Linda.
And he winked.
