Chapter 8 - THE GARDEN GATE
I ran after the SUV until my lungs burned. It turned onto the road and disappeared.
One guard caught up to me. “We have the plate.”
I repeated it to the 911 dispatcher and forced myself to breathe. Teresa needed medical help. Leo needed people looking for him who could cover more ground than I could on foot.
David reached me at the gate. “The police are on their way. Don’t leave the property yet. They need your account.”
“The car had his blanket.”
“I know.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do,” he said. “That’s why I need you to tell them everything you know.”
Behind us, Victoria came out through the service door. She had changed into her wedding gown. Its long white train dragged across the concrete.
“What happened?” she asked.
I looked at her. “Leo’s gone.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Someone sent Teresa a message from my number. Someone knew she’d recorded your call.”
“I didn’t take him.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
Owen appeared behind her, followed by two security guards. One guard held his arm.
“I was in the dressing room,” Owen said. “Ask Julian.”
“Then who sent the message?” I asked Victoria.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Her phone rang. She looked at the screen and declined it.
“Answer,” I said.
“No.”
“It might be about Leo.”
“It’s my father.”
I held out my hand. “Then he can speak to me.”
She stepped back. David moved beside me.
“You should keep that phone,” he told her. “The officers will need to see the messages.”
Police sirens sounded in the distance. Guests had begun appearing at the ballroom windows, drawn by the commotion.
Victoria looked at them, then at me.
“I never meant for anyone to take Leo,” she said.
The sentence hit me like a blow.
“You knew someone might?”
“No. Julian, I swear—”
“Who?”
Her lips parted. Before she could answer, my phone lit up with an incoming video call from Leo’s tablet.
I accepted it.
The screen showed Leo strapped into a car seat, awake and crying. A man’s voice spoke from somewhere outside the frame.
“Call off the police, Mr. Vance. Then we’ll discuss what you owe us.”
May you like
The camera shifted for half a second.
I saw a gray beard. And behind it, a sign I knew from the waterfront project Victoria said was dead.
