Chapter 2 - THE ORDERLY WITH NO NAMEVictor Hale’s house stood dark beneath the pale morning sky.
Detective Naomi Brooks parked across the street and told Rachel to remain in the unmarked sedan. Rachel had been discharged against the doctor’s preference, but she had refused to stay in a hospital where a stranger had tried to move her without authorization.
A uniformed officer waited with her.
Naomi and two detectives entered Victor’s home through the unlocked front door.
Rachel watched the upstairs curtain move in the breeze.
The same window from which Victor had recorded the garage was open.
“Do you think he ran?” the officer asked.
“He crossed the street to help me,” Rachel replied. “He wouldn’t disappear without saying anything.”
Twenty minutes later, Naomi emerged carrying a clear evidence bag. Inside was Victor’s broken phone.
“The memory card is missing,” she said after sliding into the driver’s seat. “There are signs of a struggle in his kitchen.”
“Is there blood?”
“No.”
Rachel understood the careful answer. Naomi was trying not to frighten her.
It did not work.
“Lorraine called someone before the police entered the garage,” Rachel said. “I heard her whispering near the freezer.”
Naomi opened her notebook.
“Did you hear a name?”
“No. She said, ‘The old man is watching.’ She must have meant Victor.”
“Why would she know he was watching?”
Rachel looked up at the second-floor window.
“Because she’d been watching him too.”
At the county jail, Ethan requested to speak with Rachel.
Naomi advised against it, but Rachel agreed under one condition: a detective would remain behind the observation glass.
Ethan entered the interview room wearing an orange jumpsuit. His hands were secured to a chain at his waist. Without his expensive watch or pressed office clothes, he looked smaller.
Rachel remained standing.
“Where is Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who attacked me at the hospital?”
His eyes flickered.
“You were attacked?”
She slapped the silver key onto the table.
Ethan stared at the law firm emblem.
“What does that open?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“You looked afraid before you answered.”
He lowered his head.
“Rachel, my mother said the documents were only temporary. She told me you planned to divorce me after the baby came.”
“So you trapped me in a garage?”
“She said we needed leverage.”
“You raised a broom over our child.”
“I stopped.”
“The police stopped you.”
Ethan’s mouth tightened.
Rachel leaned closer.
“Who is Grant Mercer?”
The chain at his waist rattled.
“He handled your father’s estate.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Victor is missing. A man wearing Mercer’s key tried to take me from the hospital. Tell me what you know.”
Ethan looked toward the observation glass.
“My mother borrowed money.”
“How much?”
“Almost nine hundred thousand dollars.”
Rachel stepped back.
“For what?”
“Investments. She said she could double it. The money belonged to people from her retirement community.”
“She stole from them?”
“She promised to repay everything after we sold your house.”
“It was never yours to sell.”
“I know.”
The words came too late.
Ethan inhaled unevenly.
“Mercer told her the land was valuable. Not the house. The land. He said your father left something hidden there.”
“What?”
“He called it the Blackwater file.”
Rachel had never heard the phrase.
“Where is your mother’s phone?”
“The police took it.”
“It was missing from her property inventory.”
Ethan looked genuinely startled.
“She had it when they arrested her.”
Naomi entered the room.
“Who had access to her after the arrest?”
“A transport deputy, booking officers, her attorney.”
“Who is her attorney?” Rachel asked.
Ethan hesitated.
“Grant Mercer.”
Naomi immediately called the jail supervisor.
Mercer had met Lorraine thirty minutes earlier. Security footage showed him leaving with a leather briefcase that appeared heavier than when he entered.
By the time officers reached Mercer and Pike’s downtown office, the law firm’s records room was burning.
Smoke poured from shattered windows. Employees crowded the sidewalk as firefighters pulled hoses across the street.
Rachel remained in Naomi’s car until she saw a familiar man emerge through a side alley.
The hospital attacker.
He wore a gray suit now, but the bruise beneath his chin remained visible.
“There!” Rachel shouted.
The man saw her pointing and ran.
Naomi sprinted after him.
Rachel watched them disappear between two buildings.
The uniformed officer beside the car stepped out to assist with crowd control. Before Rachel could call him back, the rear door opened.
A hand covered her mouth.
The attacker had doubled around the block.
He dragged her across the seat and pressed something hard against her ribs.
“Move over.”
Rachel bit his palm.
He cursed and struck the side of her head with his forearm. She twisted away, protecting her stomach as he climbed inside.
The sedan’s keys were still in the ignition.
He started the engine.
Rachel seized the steering wheel before he could shift into drive. The horn blared as they fought for control.
“You’re coming with me,” he snarled.
She drove her elbow into his wounded chin.
His head snapped back.
Rachel threw the door open and rolled onto the pavement. Pain burst through her shoulder, but she landed on her side rather than her stomach.
The attacker accelerated.
Naomi emerged from the alley and fired once at the car’s rear tire.
The sedan fishtailed, struck a parking meter, and spun into a delivery van. The attacker crawled through the passenger door and vanished into the smoke surrounding the burning law office.
Naomi knelt beside Rachel.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right.”
“You’re not all right.”
“I’m still here.”
Firefighters carried document boxes from the building, but the estate archives had been destroyed. Mercer himself was nowhere to be found.
That afternoon, Naomi moved Rachel to a protected apartment under another name. The unit had reinforced locks, covered windows, and two officers stationed downstairs.
Rachel’s closest friend, Mia Reynolds, brought clothes and food.
“You should leave the state,” Mia said.
“Victor disappeared because he helped me. I’m not leaving him.”
“You’re eight months pregnant.”
“That’s why I can’t spend the rest of my life running.”
Naomi arrived with news after sunset.
The crashed sedan contained a fingerprint belonging to Curtis Dane, a former private security contractor employed by several firms.
One of them was Mercer and Pike.
“We found Dane’s apartment,” Naomi said. “It had been cleared out, but he left a map.”
She unfolded a photocopy on the table.
Rachel recognized her neighborhood. Several houses had been marked, including hers and Victor’s. A red circle surrounded an abandoned building outside town.
“What is that place?”
“Blackwater Feed and Grain. It closed twelve years ago.”
Rachel touched the circle.
“My father worked there before he started his construction company.”
Naomi nodded.
“We also recovered a traffic camera image taken two hours after Victor disappeared.”
She placed a photograph beside the map.
A white utility van was traveling north toward the abandoned feed mill.
Victor sat in the passenger seat.
Someone held a gun against his neck.
Mia covered her mouth.
Rachel studied the blurred driver.
Even through the windshield, she recognized the cardigan.
Lorraine had been in jail when the image was captured.
Yet the woman driving Victor wore Lorraine’s clothes and had Lorraine’s silver hair.
Naomi turned the photograph over.
“There’s one more problem,” she said. “Jail staff checked Lorraine’s cell ten minutes ago.”
Rachel waited.
May you like
Naomi’s expression hardened.
“The woman we arrested in your garage isn’t there.”
