Chương 3
She connected the phone to the car speakers.
Their father’s voice filled the sedan.
“Harper, don’t—”
A scrape. A breath. Then silence.
The recording lasted three seconds.
Mason grabbed for the phone.
Harper caught his wrist before he reached it.
“Play it again.”
“That was Dad.”
“Play it again.”
She released him and restarted the file.
“Harper, don’t—”
Scrape. Breath. Silence.
Maddox leaned forward.
“There’s something under his voice.”
Harper turned up the volume.
On the third playback, they heard it: a soft mechanical chime, three descending notes.
Mason shook his head. “I don’t know that.”
“I do,” Harper said.
The old house had a medical alert base station in the kitchen. Thomas had bought it after a minor stroke two years earlier, though he denied the stroke had been minor because he believed the word insulted the amount of paperwork it had caused.
The base station chimed whenever it lost power.
“He was at home when this was recorded,” Harper said.
“Or they played the sound.”
“They could have. But they included it low enough that we might miss it.”
“Why?”
“Because this message may not be for us alone.”
Maddox understood first. “Someone is proving to someone else that they have him.”
Harper nodded.
Mason rubbed his mouth. “Who needs proof?”
“That’s what we find out.”
The countdown had dropped below an hour when they reached the neighborhood.
Harper killed the headlights before the final turn.
Mason looked at her. “Every cop in the county is going to love that.”
“No cop in the county is here.”
“That we can see,” Maddox said.
Harper glanced at him in the mirror.
He gave a small shrug. “Certainty is expensive.”
Thomas’s house appeared through the trees. No porch light. No movement behind the curtains. The wet driveway reflected the streetlamp at the corner.
Harper stopped two houses away.
Mason opened his door.
She caught his sleeve.
“Wait.”
“I’m not waiting in the car.”
“You’re waiting ten seconds.”
“For what?”
Harper watched the roofline, windows, neighboring porches, the dark shape of the detached garage. Nine seconds passed. On the tenth, a motion light came on beside the house.
A cat crossed the driveway.
Mason looked at her.
“Happy?”
“No.”
They approached through the yard rather than the driveway. Wet grass darkened Harper’s boots. Maddox stayed slightly behind Mason, not because he trusted him to lead but because Mason was less likely to notice a hand steering him away from danger than a voice telling him to stop.
The front door stood unlocked.
Harper touched the knob with the back of her fingers.
Mason whispered, “Dad leaves it unlocked half the time.”
“Not at night.”
“He does now.”
“No,” Harper said. “You forget to lock it when you leave.”
Mason’s breathing changed.
She opened the door.
The living room smelled like lemon furniture polish, old paper, and the faint medicinal odor of the ointment Thomas rubbed into his knees. A baseball game played silently on the television. A bowl of pretzels sat on the coffee table beside his reading glasses.
Nothing looked broken.
That was worse.
“Dad?” Mason called.
Harper held up one hand.
He called again, louder.
Maddox closed the front door behind them but did not lock it.
Harper moved through the living room. Thomas’s recliner was angled toward the television. One slipper lay beside it. The other was near the hallway, turned on its side.
She crouched beside the fallen slipper.
A dark smear marked the sole.
Mason leaned over her. “Blood?”
“Grease.”
“From what?”
Harper rubbed it between finger and thumb. “Graphite, maybe.”
Maddox checked the kitchen. “Back door’s shut. Window over the sink is open two inches.”
“He always does that when he burns toast,” Mason said.
A piece of toast sat in the sink, black on one side.
The medical alert base station had been unplugged.
Harper inspected the cord. It had not been yanked. Someone had pinched the plug and removed it carefully.
She plugged it back in.
Three descending notes sounded.
The same chime from the recording.
Mason flinched.
The red indicator light blinked, then turned green.
A recorded voice announced that the system was reconnecting.
Maddox pointed to the counter. “Medication.”
Thomas’s pill organizer sat open. Wednesday evening’s compartment was empty. Thursday morning’s pills remained. His blood-pressure medication bottle was gone.
“He took the bottle with him,” Mason said.
“Or someone packed it.”
“Kidnappers don’t pack medication.”
“Smart ones do.”
Mason pulled his dead phone from his pocket, remembered Harper had told him to keep it off, and looked angry at the device.
“We call the police.”
Harper walked down the hallway.
“I’m calling them,” he said.
She turned.
“If Dad was taken, the police need to know. I don’t care what classified nightmare you brought to his door.”
“Call them.”
Mason blinked, as if he had prepared for resistance and did not know what to do without it.
Harper pointed toward the living room.
“Use the landline. Tell them he’s missing, there’s evidence someone entered the home, and we received a threatening photograph. Don’t mention Iron Ten on an open emergency call.”
“You don’t get to edit the truth.”
“I’m telling you how to get deputies here without putting a classified designation into a recorded county system before we know who can access it.”
Mason’s eyes hardened.
Maddox said, “She’s right about that part.”
“Of course she is.”
Mason went to the phone.
Harper entered her father’s bedroom.
The lamp from the photograph was still on. The curtains had been closed afterward, but one panel hung unevenly. Thomas’s side of the bed was rumpled. The other side remained flat, untouched since their mother had died five years earlier.
Harper had asked him once why he still slept on the left side.
He had said the right side was not his.
May you like
The clock showed 12:31.
She stood where the photographer must have stood outside the window and studied the angle. The image had been taken from slightly above the bed, which meant the camera had been held near the top of the glass. The photographer was tall, or had raised an arm. The curtain had been open enough to see inside.
