Chapter 12 - The Pickup List
Owen was seventeen.
Old enough to think he could handle a man with a clipboard.
Young enough to believe the man when he said his sister had been taken back to the hospital.
Leah had listed Grant’s foundation as an emergency contact during a summer job program.
The driver knew that.
He knew her name.
Her job.
The hospital where she had been treated.
Leah called the police before she called me.
For the next forty minutes, there was nothing useful for me to do.
That was almost unbearable.
My father’s company supplied vehicle information from the estate cameras.
The school preserved its entrance footage.
Ortiz coordinated with officers searching the route.
I sat beside Leah while she called Owen again.
And again.
On the eleventh try, he answered.
“Lee?”
She nearly dropped the phone.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.
Some office.
They said my phone was interfering with medical equipment, but there isn’t any.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
A man spoke in the background.
The call ended.
Leah made a sound I never wanted to hear again.
Minutes later, my phone rang.
Grant.
He had been released pending further proceedings.
The protective order barred him from contacting me.
He called anyway.
I put the phone on speaker while Mara started documenting the time.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Grant sighed.
“Blake is keeping him comfortable.
You people are making this ugly.”
“You took a kid out of school.”
“He accepted a ride.”
Mara wrote one word on a pad.
LISTEN.
Grant lowered his voice.
“Give us the drive.
Tell the detective Leah exaggerated.
This stops.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even asked what happens if you don’t.”
I looked at Leah.
Her hands were locked together.
Her face had gone gray.
“What happens, Grant?”
“You lose everything.”
For seven years, that sentence had worked.
My home.
My marriage.
My place in his world.
He had always made the threat sound larger than the life he allowed me.
“Tell me where Owen is.”
“You know the satellite office on Westbridge.”
Mara sent the address.
Grant kept talking.
He wanted me to understand how reasonable he was.
That helped the police more than he knew.
Owen was found twenty-three minutes later.
He was frightened.
Uninjured.
Locked in a records room.
Blake was arrested outside the building.
Leah fell against me when Ortiz called.
I held her while she cried.
Then the detective said something else.
“There’s a document destruction service scheduled at that office tonight.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
May you like
I looked at the clock.
Eight forty-seven.
