Chapter 10 - The Boy at the Bus Stop
Mrs. Bell’s grandson was sixteen.
His name was Eli.
He worked three evenings a week at a grocery store and took the bus home because his grandmother refused to let him spend his first paychecks on a car he couldn’t afford.
That night, he hadn’t come home.
Mrs. Bell called him six times.
On the seventh, somebody answered.
It wasn’t Eli.
“Tell Dante we’re done waiting.”
Then the line went dead.
Mrs. Bell folded in half as if someone had struck her.
“I should have given her the key,” she kept saying. “I should have given her the key.”
I sat beside her.
“This isn’t your fault.”
But I could tell she didn’t believe me.
Dante stood by the window with both hands pressed against the sill.
“Give me the phone,” he said.
Elaine stepped in front of him.
“The police are already being contacted.”
“He won’t have time.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know my brother.”
“Then tell them what you know.”
He turned toward her.
For a second, I thought he would push past.
Instead, I said his name.
He looked at me.
“Sophia asked you for a hug,” I told him. “She didn’t ask you to become the worst version of yourself.”
His face tightened.
“This is not that simple.”
“No. It’s a boy who needs to come home.”
He stared at me.
Then he picked up the investigator’s phone.
He gave addresses. Vehicles. Names of men who worked for Mercer. A warehouse near the river that wasn’t listed under the Falcone name.
Information he had spent his life making sure outsiders never got.
The hours moved slowly.
Sophia woke once, asked for water, and fell asleep with her hand curled around my finger.
At 3:17 a.m., Elaine’s phone rang.
Eli had been found in an office at the warehouse.
Alive.
Frightened. Bruised on one wrist. Otherwise able to walk out with the officers.
One man had been arrested. Another had run.
Mrs. Bell cried so quietly that at first I thought she was praying.
Dante sat in the corner, staring at the carpet.
He had helped bring the boy home.
It had also cost him the last of his brother’s trust.
At dawn, a video arrived on his phone.
Mercer sat somewhere dark, looking directly into the camera.
“Your wife wasn’t the only one asking questions,” he said.
May you like
Then he held up a phone in a cracked black case.
“Marco left you a message. Want to hear what you missed?”
