Chapter 7
The emergency lights flashed red.
Ruiz pulled her weapon.
“Everyone against the wall.”
A fire alarm began screaming.
Smoke pushed beneath the door.
David grabbed a chair and smashed the narrow window.
“Hallway’s filling up.”
Emma held my hand.
“Is Ryan here?”
“I don’t know.”
Sprinklers came on.
Water poured from the ceiling.
Ruiz opened the door carefully.
Two officers were guiding people toward the stairwell.
“Fire in the evidence room!” someone shouted.
The memory card.
That was why Ryan had come.
Ruiz pushed us toward the emergency exit.
“We’re moving to the parking garage.”
Leah stayed behind us.
David went first.
On the second-floor landing, a man in a firefighter’s jacket appeared.
His helmet hid most of his face.
He pointed down another corridor.
“That stairwell is blocked. This way.”
Ruiz stopped.
“Identify yourself.”
The man turned.
I saw his eyes.
Cole.
Ruiz raised her weapon.
“Hands up.”
Cole threw a metal canister down the stairs.
White smoke exploded around us.
Emma screamed.
I lost her hand.
Someone struck me from behind.
I fell against the railing.
“Emma!”
Through the smoke, I saw Cole grab her.
She bit his wrist.
He cursed and dragged her toward the corridor.
David tackled him.
All three hit the floor.
Emma crawled away.
Ryan appeared from a side door.
He seized her around the waist.
“No!” I screamed.
He carried her into the smoke.
I ran after them.
A door slammed.
By the time I reached the parking garage, a black SUV was speeding toward the exit.
I saw Emma striking the rear window.
Then the vehicle disappeared.
The world tilted beneath me.
Ruiz grabbed my shoulders.
“Sarah, look at me.”
“He took her.”
“We will find her.”
“He took my child!”
Officers surrounded the garage.
Radios crackled.
David helped Leah outside.
Cole was gone too.
The fire in the evidence room had been contained, but several computers were destroyed.
The original memory card survived because Ruiz had placed it in a secure evidence vault on another floor.
Ryan had failed to destroy the files.
So he had taken Emma instead.
A statewide alert went out.
The SUV had stolen plates.
Traffic cameras lost it south of the city.
I called Ryan over and over.
He did not answer.
Then Emma’s account posted a video.
She sat in front of a bare wall.
Ryan stood behind the camera.
“My mother told me to lie,” Emma said.
Her voice sounded flat.
“Ryan never hurt me. I entered his office and stole private property. My mother dug the hole in our backyard because she planned to frame him.”
A bruise darkened her cheek.
I dropped the phone.
“He hit her.”
Ruiz replayed the video.
“Look at her left hand.”
Emma’s fingers tapped against her leg.
Three short taps.
Three long.
Three short.
“SOS,” Leah whispered.
Then Emma pointed down twice.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
David leaned closer.
“Mark taught her directions with clock positions when they went camping.”
He watched again.
“She pointed down, then left.”
“Southwest,” I said.
Emma touched her ear.
Then she tapped four times.
“Sound?” Leah asked.
“Four.”
Ruiz froze the image.
“There’s a train horn in the background every forty seconds.”
She contacted dispatch.
Only four industrial areas southwest of Dallas had that pattern of freight traffic.
Teams began searching all four.
My phone rang.
Ryan.
“Did you enjoy Emma’s performance?”
“If you hurt her—”
“You will do what?”
His voice was calm.
“You keep forgetting that I know you better than anyone.”
“You never knew me.”
“I know that you blame yourself for Mark’s death. I know that you will sacrifice anything for Emma. I know exactly how to break you.”
“What do you want?”
“The second memory card.”
“You don’t know that it exists.”
“I do now.”
He had heard us in the vault.
“Bring it to the old Bennett warehouse at midnight.”
Leah looked at Ruiz.
She nodded for me to continue.
“How do I know Emma will be there?”
Ryan put her on the phone.
“Mom?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m okay.”
Her voice cracked.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
Ryan took the phone.
“Midnight. Alone.”
The call ended.
Leah recognized the warehouse.
Her family’s company had abandoned it ten years earlier.
“My father stored machinery there,” she said. “There are tunnels beneath the loading floor.”
Ruiz prepared a rescue operation.
I was fitted with a hidden microphone and given a fake memory card.
“No heroics,” Ruiz said. “Your job is to make him bring Emma into view.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We adapt.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
At eleven fifty, I drove into the abandoned warehouse district.
Rain had started again.
The Bennett building stood behind a rusted fence.
One door was open.
I entered.
“Ryan?”
A light came on.
Melissa sat in the center of the warehouse.
This time, she was actually tied to a chair.
Her face was swollen.
“Sarah, run.”
Cole stepped from behind a support column and pointed a gun at me.
“Take off your coat.”
My microphone was inside it.
I hesitated.
“Now.”
I removed it.
Cole dropped the coat into a bucket of water.
He searched me, took my phone, and shoved me toward Melissa.
“Where is Emma?”
Ryan appeared on the metal walkway above us.
“She’s safe.”
“Let me see her.”
“First, the card.”
I held it up.
“Emma first.”
He smiled.
“You finally learned to negotiate.”
A door opened on the upper level.
Emma stepped out.
Her hands were bound in front of her.
There was blood at the corner of her lip, but she was standing.
“Mom!”
Ryan caught her shoulder.
I fought the urge to run.
“Send her down.”
“Throw the card onto the walkway.”
“Not until she is beside me.”
Cole pressed the gun against my back.
“Do what he says.”
Melissa looked at me.
Her fingers were working against the rope.
“Sarah,” she whispered. “The card is in Mark’s music box.”
Ryan heard her.
“What?”
Melissa smiled through her split lip.
“She brought you a fake.”
Ryan’s face twisted.
He pushed Emma toward the edge of the walkway.
“One more lie, and she falls.”
The drop was nearly twenty feet.
I threw the card.
It landed near his shoes.
He released Emma long enough to pick it up.
Emma ran.
Ryan caught her sweatshirt.
The fabric pulled tight.
She slipped one arm free, twisted, and drove her elbow into his chest.
It was a move David had taught her when she was eight.
Ryan lost his balance.
Emma raced down the stairs.
Cole turned his gun toward her.
Melissa broke one hand free and threw herself sideways.
Her chair struck Cole’s legs.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Police flooded the building.
“Drop the weapon!”
Cole grabbed Melissa by the throat and pulled her in front of him.
Ryan ran across the upper walkway.
David emerged from a side stairwell and tackled him against the railing.
I reached Emma.
She crashed into my arms.
“I knew you’d come.”
“I will always come.”
Ryan shoved David away and jumped onto a lower stack of crates.
The wood collapsed beneath him.
He hit the floor hard but managed to stand.
Ruiz aimed her weapon.
“Ryan, stop!”
He ran into one of the underground tunnels.
Cole released Melissa and followed him.
Ruiz sent officers after them.
I untied my sister.
She collapsed against me.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
I wanted to hate her.
Part of me did.
But I held her until the paramedics came.
An officer emerged from the tunnel.
“They found Cole’s jacket and the gun.”
“What about Ryan?” Ruiz asked.
“Gone. There’s an exit near the railroad tracks.”
Emma tightened her arms around me.
Ryan had escaped again.
Then Leah walked toward the tunnel entrance.
A broken silver bracelet lay on the floor.
She picked it up with trembling fingers.
“My sister wore this the day she disappeared.”
A faint sound came from beneath the warehouse.
Not a train.
May you like
A woman’s voice.
“Help me.”
