Chapter 9 - The BadgeThe photograph changed everything.
It changes the temperature of every room.
Jenna stopped crying after the first hour.
That frightened me more than tears.
She sat inside the command center police assembled at headquarters, staring at Sophie's school photograph on a screen.
Agents from the FBI joined the investigation after the kidnapping crossed jurisdictional lines connected to Ryan's other crimes.
Every highway camera was searched.
Airports notified.
Border crossings flagged.
Vale's attorney demanded protection before offering anything more.
Reed slammed both palms on the interview table.
“Where would Ryan take her?”
Vale stared back.
“I don't know.”
“You worked with him fifteen years.”
“That doesn't mean I know every property.”
“A seventeen-year-old girl is missing.”
Vale shrugged.
Reed nearly climbed across the table.
The FBI agent beside him stopped him.
Then I asked to speak to Vale.
“No,” Reed said.
“He'll talk to me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He wants leverage. I'm the leverage.”
Twenty minutes later, I sat across from Daniel Vale.
A camera recorded everything.
Vale looked smaller than I expected.
Fifty years old.
Receding hair.
Expensive attorney.
Ordinary face.
I had imagined a monster.
Instead, I saw someone you might stand beside in a grocery-store line.
“You killed my sister,” I said.
“Ryan killed Claire.”
“You drove the car.”
“I followed orders.”
“That sentence has never made anyone innocent.”
Vale looked away.
I placed a photograph of Sophie on the table.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Then think.”
“I said—”
“You know Ryan's habits.”
He remained silent.
“What happens when he feels betrayed?”
“He cuts loose ends.”
“Vale.”
“He panics.”
“Where?”
No answer.
I leaned closer.
“You think Ryan is coming back for you?”
Vale's jaw tightened.
“He isn't.”
“You're right.”
I slid copies of documents across the table.
Ryan had created accounts tied to Vale's name.
Payments to contractors.
Vehicle purchases.
The SUV involved in Claire's murder.
All registered through companies connected to Vale.
“You were never his partner,” I said.
“He's framing you.”
“I know what these are.”
“Then you know you'll spend the rest of your life in prison while Ryan disappears.”
Vale's mouth tightened.
“You don't understand him.”
“Melissa Grant does.”
Everything in Vale changed.
His face lost color.
“She’s dead.”
“No.”
I let the silence work.
“She survived.”
Vale stared at me.
“And she's talking.”
His attorney whispered something.
Vale ignored him.
“Ryan knows?”
“Not yet.”
That was a lie.
But Vale couldn't know.
“If Sophie dies,” I said, “you're the only person left for Ryan to blame.”
Vale finally broke.
“There are three fallback properties.”
Reed entered immediately.
Addresses followed.
The first was empty.
The second contained weapons and cash.
At the third, outside an abandoned paper mill, investigators found Sophie's jacket.
But no Sophie.
Ryan had been there less than an hour earlier.
Security-camera footage showed a dark van leaving.
The license plate belonged to a nursing-home shuttle stolen that morning.
Then Melissa remembered something.
“Medical transport.”
“What?” Reed asked.
“Ryan used medical vehicles before. People ignore them. Ambulances. Nursing vans.”
Search alerts expanded.
At 8:31 p.m., a traffic camera identified the stolen van heading toward western Massachusetts.
At 8:47, another camera captured it leaving the highway.
Then nothing.
There were hundreds of miles of rural roads.
We had sixteen hours remaining.
At midnight, Ryan called again.
He demanded proof Vale would be released.
Reed stalled.
Ryan let Sophie speak.
“Mom?”
Jenna broke.
“Sophie!”
“Mom, I'm okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I don't—”
Ryan took the phone.
“Tomorrow. Noon.”
Then he gave instructions.
Vale would be transported to a parking area near an abandoned rail depot.
One vehicle.
No helicopters.
No visible police.
In exchange, Sophie would be released.
Of course Ryan wasn't planning a real trade.
Everybody knew that.
So did I.
But while Ryan spoke, Sophie had given us something.
Three faint noises in the background.
A bell.
Running water.
And a train horn.
Audio analysts isolated them.
The bell rang every fifteen minutes.
A church or clock tower.
The water sounded heavy enough to be a river.
The train horn pattern belonged to a freight line.
Maps narrowed possibilities.
Twenty-three locations.
Then Jenna suddenly stood.
“Sophie said something.”
“What?”
“She said, ‘I'm okay.’”
“Yes.”
“No. The way she said it.”
Jenna replayed the audio.
Sophie emphasized okay strangely.
Jenna covered her mouth.
“When she was little, if she couldn't speak freely, I told her to use certain words.”
“What does okay mean?”
“Look up.”
Everyone froze.
“Look up at what?”
Jenna closed her eyes, thinking.
Then she whispered, “Numbers.”
Police enhanced a tiny section of Sophie's voice.
Before Ryan took the phone, Sophie had breathed something nearly inaudible.
“Four seven.”
Forty-seven.
A highway?
A building?
A route?
Then an agent checked railway maps.
Freight marker 47 sat beside the Westfield River.
Less than half a mile away stood an abandoned Catholic retreat center with an old bell tower.
Teams deployed immediately.
I wasn't allowed to go.
Neither was Jenna.
We waited.
And waited.
At 3:12 a.m., Reed received the call.
They had found the building.
Empty.
For one horrible second, nobody breathed.
Then:
“Wait.”
An agent had found a locked cellar.
Inside was Sophie.
Alive.
Jenna screamed.
Ryan was gone.
But he'd left something behind.
A laptop displaying a live countdown.
Eight hours, forty-two minutes.
And a message:
Alice comes alone or the next body is hers.
Beneath the message was a photograph.
Not Sophie.
Me.
Taken less than two hours earlier.
Inside police headquarters.
Someone in the building had photographed me.
Ryan had an insider.
That explained how he knew about Ortiz.
How he knew Claire's case had reopened.
How he stayed ahead of warrants.
May you like
Someone wearing a badge was helping him.
And until we discovered who, none of us knew which officer in the room could be trusted.
