Chapter 2 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
“Get Emily into the vehicle,” Marcus ordered.
I didn't move.
For twenty-five years, people had followed my commands because they believed I could see dangers they couldn't. Marcus had followed mine because he believed we shared the same instincts.
But the expression on his face told me that something had changed.
He wasn't looking at the sedan anymore.
He was looking at the little girl.
“Why are you afraid of her?” I asked.
“I'm not.”
“Then why did you flinch when you saw that photograph?”
Marcus's jaw tightened.
“Sebastian, we can discuss this somewhere secure.”
“That's what people say when they don't want to answer questions.”
The rear door of the sedan remained open.
Nobody stepped out.
Rainwater streamed down its polished bodywork, gathering beneath the tires.
Emily suddenly grabbed my hand.
“That's the car.”
I lowered myself toward her.
“What?”
“The car from yesterday.”
She pointed across the street.
“The big man drove it.”
Marcus went pale.
That was the moment I knew the danger wasn't simply connected to my son's disappearance.
It was connected to something Marcus already understood.
I took Emily by the shoulders.
“Listen to me. You're going to sit in the middle of the back seat. Colonel Reed will sit beside you. I'm going to follow in another vehicle.”
Marcus stared at me.
“You're separating yourself from the child?”
“I'm putting her somewhere warm while I determine why every person who sees Lucas's photograph suddenly starts behaving like a criminal.”
“That's reckless.”
“Then you should be grateful I'm not asking for your opinion.”
His face hardened.
For an instant, I glimpsed a stranger wearing the features of my oldest friend.
Then Emily tugged at my sleeve.
“Mr. Sebastian?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“The man in the car has been watching us since I found you.”
I looked across the intersection.
The open rear door was empty.
The driver remained behind the wheel.
But a thin line of smoke drifted from the open window, and a small red light blinked near the dashboard.
A camera.
Someone had been recording us.
“Marcus,” I said, “get her inside.”
This time he obeyed.
I watched him open the SUV's rear door and help Emily climb in. Before he shut it, she leaned toward me.
“Don't trust the man with the silver watch.”
I glanced at Marcus's wrist.
His watch was black.
“Who has the silver watch?”
Emily pointed toward the sedan.
“The big man.”
The engine roared.
The sedan pulled into traffic, cutting between two buses before disappearing around the corner.
I started running.
I had commanded infantry units through hostile territory. I had walked across bomb-damaged streets with shrapnel embedded in my uniform. Yet I sprinted through that intersection with the desperate, irrational fury of a father who believed his child's abductor was escaping for the second time.
I reached the opposite curb just as a delivery truck blocked my view.
The sedan was gone.
My phone vibrated.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
I answered.
“Who is this?”
A man's voice came through the speaker, calm and almost amused.
“General Ross. You look terrible in the rain.”
My entire body went still.
“You were watching me.”
“I've been watching you for a long time.”
“Where is my son?”
A short laugh.
“Your son is alive. That is more than I can promise you if you continue asking the wrong questions.”
I clenched the phone.
“Tell me where he is.”
“You really should have left the past alone, Sebastian.”
The call ended.
I stood under a traffic signal, staring at the dark screen.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph.
It showed a small bedroom with peeling wallpaper, a narrow mattress, and a child's drawing taped to the wall.
Lucas had drawn the picture.
I knew his crooked sun, his three-legged dog, and the way he always wrote his name too close to the bottom of the paper.
But there was something else in the photograph.
On the mattress lay a green toy soldier.
I had bought it for him on his fifth birthday.
Beneath the image were six words.
YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE TO SAVE HIM.
I felt the old memory rise from somewhere deep in my mind.
Fort Bragg.
The midnight alarm.
The fire.
A young soldier pounding on a locked door while smoke swallowed the corridor.
And a commanding officer telling me that opening that door would compromise the entire operation.
I'd made the decision.
I had followed orders from a man whose judgment I trusted.
One soldier died.
The investigation concluded that the death had been unavoidable.
But there had been a witness who insisted someone had deliberately disabled the emergency system.
That witness vanished before the hearing.
His name had been Sergeant Daniel Miller.
I hadn't thought about him in years.
Now someone was using that night to threaten my son.
I returned to the SUV.
Marcus stood beside it, speaking urgently into his phone. He stopped when he saw me.
“Who were you calling?” I asked.
“Security.”
“Whose security?”
“My contacts.”
“Your contacts aren't answering to me today. They're answering to someone else.”
He lowered the phone.
“Sebastian, you're exhausted. You're grieving. You're seeing patterns that might not exist.”
I looked through the rear window.
Emily sat curled against the seat, my coat wrapped tightly around her. She was watching us.
“Do you know what that girl did today?” I asked.
Marcus said nothing.
“She gave a hungry man her last piece of bread because she thought he needed it more than she did. She gave a stranger her only photograph of a little boy because she believed his father deserved to know his son was alive.”
I stepped closer.
“And you want me to believe I'm imagining things?”
Marcus looked away.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he exhaled and said, “There is something you don't know about Lucas's disappearance.”
My heart began to race.
“What?”
“Your ex-wife contacted me three days before she vanished.”
The world narrowed to his face.
“Why?”
“She said she had discovered something dangerous. She believed someone was following them.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“She specifically asked me not to.”
“She's my son's mother!”
“She told me that if you knew what she had found, you'd do exactly what you're doing now. You'd start investigating, and whoever was responsible would use Lucas to control you.”
I stared at him.
“What did she discover?”
Marcus's voice dropped.
“A connection between the Fort Bragg incident and the defense contracts your office approved afterward.”
I felt my pulse hammering in my throat.
“That investigation was closed.”
“Officially.”
“And unofficially?”
He looked toward the street where the sedan had disappeared.
“Unofficially, someone made a great deal of money from that soldier's death.”
I wanted to strike him.
Instead, I asked the only question that mattered.
“Where is Elena?”
“My last contact with her was eleven months ago.”
“Was she alive?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
Marcus reached into his coat and removed a sealed envelope.
“I received this six days ago.”
The envelope was addressed in Elena's handwriting.
On the front, beneath my name, were four words.
OPEN ONLY IF LUCAS RETURNS.
My hands shook as I tore it open.
Inside was a single sheet of paper and a small brass key.
The note contained only one sentence.
Sebastian, if Emily has found you, then the people who took our son have finally made their next move.
Beneath it was a final line.
Do not let Lucas see his grandmother.
I looked at Marcus.
“Lucas's grandmother died six years ago.”
“No,” Marcus whispered.
He stared at the letter as though it had risen from a grave.
“Your mother didn't die, Sebastian.”
May you like
The rain kept falling.
And somewhere in Chicago, a woman I had buried in my memory was apparently waiting for my son.
