Chapter 6 - THE CALL FROM NOWHEREPolice traced Rachel’s call for eleven seconds.
Not a big smile.
That would have been easier to understand.
It was barely there.
A slight tightening at one corner of his mouth.
Recognition without surprise.
“You know where they are,” Ortiz said.
Trevor leaned back.
His attorney touched his sleeve.
“My client will not—”
“Two women are tied to chairs.”
“My client has been in custody for six hours.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Trevor stared at the picture.
“Rachel always was dramatic.”
Ortiz nearly came across the table.
Instead, she stood.
“You should pray we find them.”
Trevor finally looked up.
“You should pray Rachel hasn’t lied to you about everything.”
The photograph had been stripped of location data.
The phone number was untraceable.
The room behind Rachel and June showed gray concrete walls, exposed pipes and one small rectangular window.
Not enough.
Police circulated the image among specialists.
They studied the newspaper.
The chair.
The floor.
The pipe fittings.
Even the dust.
Nothing.
Caleb, however, saw something immediately.
“Grandma’s blanket.”
Ortiz zoomed in.
Behind June’s chair, barely visible, lay a red-and-yellow crocheted blanket.
“You recognize that?”
“Grandma made it.”
“Where does she keep it?”
“In her car.”
June Harper’s vehicle was still missing.
That meant their captor had probably taken the women using June’s car.
A statewide alert went out.
No result.
Then Caleb said, “The frog place.”
I felt my pulse rise.
“What frog place?”
“Daddy used to take us there.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened there?”
“He met Uncle Wade.”
Ortiz’s head snapped up.
“Who is Uncle Wade?”
Caleb shrugged.
“He’s not really my uncle.”
That name did not appear anywhere in Trevor’s known business records.
But Ortiz’s team found a Wade within an hour.
Wade Kessler.
Forty-one.
Former sheriff’s deputy.
Fired seven years earlier after allegations involving stolen evidence.
No conviction.
He had worked briefly for Dawson Protective Services but officially left three years ago.
His current address was a mobile home outside Mesa.
Empty.
His phone was off.
His bank activity had stopped the previous week.
And Wade owned property.
Eighty acres of scrubland near an abandoned aggregate quarry.
On satellite imagery, a cluster of seasonal ponds dotted the land.
In spring, they filled with frogs.
The frog place.
SWAT teams moved before sunset.
I wasn’t supposed to know where.
But Ortiz called me from the road.
“Daniel, stay at the hospital.”
“Are you going there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Rachel—”
“I don’t know.”
“Lena.”
She paused.
It was the first time I’d used her first name.
“Bring them home.”
“I intend to.”
The next three hours were unbearable.
Caleb played with Sophie.
Mia slept.
I pretended not to check my phone every thirty seconds.
At 8:41, Ortiz called.
I stepped into the hallway.
“Well?”
“We found June.”
I closed my eyes.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“And Rachel?”
Silence.
“Lena?”
“She’s not here.”
My relief collapsed.
“What happened?”
“June was locked in a storm cellar. Dehydrated, bruised, but alive. Wade was gone.”
“Where’s Rachel?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did June say?”
“She was unconscious during part of the transport. Last time she saw Rachel was this afternoon.”
“Who took her?”
“Wade.”
“Why separate them?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
Then Ortiz said, “June told us something else.”
“What?”
“Trevor isn’t the one she’s most afraid of.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who is?”
“Someone named Hollis.”
The name meant nothing to me.
It meant plenty to police.
Graham Hollis was sixty-two, wealthy, politically connected, and almost invisible outside certain circles.
He owned development companies, private clinics, logistics firms, two local television stations, and pieces of several politicians’ careers.
Dawson Protective Services had handled his security for years.
Rachel’s files included Hollis’s name repeatedly.
Payments.
Meetings.
Photographs.
One recording contained his voice.
Not confessing to murder.
Nothing that easy.
But discussing “problems” and “removal.”
June believed Trevor had started collecting evidence against Hollis to protect himself.
Rachel had discovered both men were trapping each other with secrets.
“Trevor’s a dangerous man,” June told police from her hospital bed. “But Hollis is the man Trevor is scared of.”
I sat in silence when Ortiz explained it.
“So Hollis took Rachel?”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
“She has the evidence.”
“But police have the blue box now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know that.”
“Then tell him.”
“And give away what we have?”
“She’s a human being.”
“I know.”
I immediately regretted my tone.
Ortiz sounded exhausted.
“Daniel, every decision right now can get Rachel killed.”
I looked through the hospital window at Caleb.
“What about Trevor?”
“He may cooperate if he thinks Hollis betrayed him.”
“Will he?”
“I don’t know.”
Trevor did cooperate.
But not for Rachel.
For himself.
At 11:18 that night, he requested a meeting without his lawyer.
He gave police a warehouse address near the old rail district.
“Hollis uses it when he wants privacy,” Trevor said.
Ortiz stared at him.
“Why tell us?”
“Because Graham made one mistake.”
“What?”
“He touched my family.”
Ortiz almost laughed at the hypocrisy.
“You chased your wife through a parking lot.”
“She stole my children.”
“She was protecting them.”
Trevor’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t understand our marriage.”
“No. I understand fear.”
Trevor leaned forward.
“If Hollis has Rachel, he will kill her before midnight.”
“Why midnight?”
“Because after midnight, the evidence stored on his private network automatically backs up overseas.”
“What evidence?”
“The kind that puts men like him in prison.”
“And you?”
Trevor smiled again.
“The kind that puts me there too.”
Police raided the rail warehouse at 11:43 p.m.
They found blood.
A broken chair.
Rachel’s wedding ring.
And one sentence painted across the wall:
YOU FOUND THE WRONG WOMAN.
At 11:58 p.m., Caleb’s hospital room phone rang.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a woman breathed my name.
“Daniel?”
I froze.
“Who is this?”
“This is Rachel.”
I motioned frantically for Ortiz.
“Rachel, where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice shook.
“He made me call you.”
“Who?”
There was movement in the background.
Then a man’s voice came onto the line.
Calm.
Educated.
Older.
“Mr. Mercer.”
My skin went cold.
“You should have kept walking through that parking lot.”
“You left two children to die.”
“No. Their mother did.”
“Where is she?”
A quiet chuckle.
“Close enough to hear this.”
Then Rachel screamed.
The line went dead.
May you like
And Caleb, awake behind me, whispered:
“That wasn’t Daddy.”
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