Chương 2
It was not Grant’s voice.
Marcus’s lips formed the name Ray.
Ethan put a finger to his own mouth.
The door rose another foot. Boots stepped through. The flashlight moved over the safe, the torn envelope, the water scattered by the impact. It stopped.
“Marcus, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Ray crawled under the half-open door and stood. He was broad through the middle, wearing a navy raincoat and a black knit cap. His right hand stayed in his pocket.
Ethan could have reached him before the man cleared the entrance. The distance was simple. The angles were simple. Six years earlier, before desk work and school pickups and the habit of checking whether Violet had remembered her lunch, he might have allowed simplicity to decide for him.
Instead, he lifted his phone and began recording.
Ray stepped to the safe.
“Grant’s done waiting,” he said. “Where’s the book?”
Marcus stared at Ethan.
Ethan barely shook his head.
Ray turned slowly, shining the flashlight toward the pallets. “You think he won’t burn you for this? He already gave the cops your name.”
Marcus closed his eyes.
The flashlight swept toward the shipping container.
Ethan rose before the beam reached them.
Ray jerked backward. His hand came out of his pocket holding a compact pistol.
Ethan struck his wrist with the flat of his forearm, drove him into the side of the container, and trapped the gun hand between their bodies. The impact rang through the warehouse. Ray grunted and tried to twist free.
Ethan did not hit him again. He leaned his weight in, bent the wrist until the pistol fell, and kicked it beneath a pallet.
Ray spat into the rainwater at Ethan’s feet.
“You’re Cole.”
Ethan held him against the steel.
“Who told you where my daughter would be?”
Ray laughed once. It was a nervous sound pretending to be contempt.
Behind Ethan, Marcus said, “Don’t.”
Ray turned his head as far as Ethan’s grip allowed. “You still here?”
“Grant told you to leave her,” Marcus said. “You went downstairs anyway.”
Ray’s face changed.
Not much. His eyes narrowed and his mouth stopped working at its sneer. For Ethan, that was enough.
“What did you do?” Ethan asked.
“She fell.”
“You went after a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“She had a phone.”
“She was calling 911.”
“She hit me with a lamp.”
A picture appeared in Ethan’s mind without permission: Violet in the basement laundry room, one sock on, the other foot bare, using the ceramic lamp Laura had bought at a church sale. He had seen the broken base on the stairs. He had stepped over its cord while the paramedics carried Violet out.
His grip tightened.
Ray’s breath caught.
Ethan heard Violet’s second text again though the phone made no sound.
DAD PLEASE ANSWER.
He released Ray.
The man stumbled forward in surprise. Ethan took two steps back, keeping himself between Ray and the gun.
Ray rubbed his wrist. “What, you grow a conscience?”
“No.”
Ethan raised his phone, showing the red recording light.
“I remembered I need you alive.”
Marcus let out a breath that almost became a laugh. No one joined him.
Ray looked toward the pallet hiding the pistol. Ethan followed the glance.
“Don’t make the next part stupid,” Ethan said.
The warehouse door began to descend.
All three men turned.
A vehicle accelerated outside. Tires hissed through standing water, then faded toward the pier road.
Marcus moved first. He ran to the door, dropped to his stomach, and looked through the narrowing gap. By the time Ethan reached him, only taillights remained, red shapes bending through rain.
“That was Grant,” Marcus said.
“You see him?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“I know his car.”
Ray smiled at the floor.
Ethan looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means he saw enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“To start cleaning.”
Ethan’s phone vibrated in his hand.
Harbor General again.
He answered.
“Mr. Cole?” a woman said. “This is Dr. Patel. Your daughter is asking for you.”
“I’m coming.”
“She’s stable, but she’s frightened, and the police have questions. We need a parent present before they proceed.”
“Don’t let Detective Grant near her.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sorry?”
“Detective Owen Grant. Do not let him into her room.”
“Mr. Cole, there are already two detectives here.”
“Ask their names.”
“I can’t—”
“Ask them.”
His tone made the woman stop arguing. Muffled voices moved beyond the receiver. Ethan watched Ray while he waited. Ray’s smile had disappeared.
Dr. Patel returned.
“Detectives Ruiz and Grant.”
Ethan looked at Marcus.
Marcus shook his head with increasing urgency.
“Get my daughter out of that room,” Ethan said.
“Mr. Cole—”
“Take her for imaging. A test. Anything. Do not leave her alone with Grant.”
“I can’t mislead law enforcement.”
“He ordered the men who broke into my house.”
Silence answered him.
Ethan lowered his voice. “I have the recording. I have the phone. Please.”
Dr. Patel breathed once into the receiver. “How soon can you be here?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“You have ten before I become very unpopular.”
The line ended.
Ethan put Marcus’s phone in the inner pocket of his jacket and picked up the birthday envelope. He slid it carefully beside the phone.
Ray watched him. “You go to that hospital, you walk into Grant’s hands.”
“He won’t move against me in public.”
“You keep thinking he’s a cop who breaks rules. He’s not. He’s a criminal who knows the rules better than you do.”
Ethan turned to Marcus. “Your truck outside?”
Marcus nodded.
“Keys?”
“In it.”
“Of course they are,” Ray said.
Marcus glanced at him. “Nobody was supposed to steal it.”
May you like
Ethan moved to the gun beneath the pallet, kicked it farther out, then used his boot to drag a length of chain from beside the loading door. He looped it through the door wheel and around a steel support.
Ray watched without concern until Ethan took a pair of plastic zip restraints from his jacket pocket.
