Chapter 3 - What He Brought Home
Daniel turned the phone facedown.
Émilie caught his wrist.
“Was that him?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you think it was.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“Yes.”
She hated how much that honest answer frightened her.
Luis drove them home in his van. Owen helped Daniel transfer into the passenger seat, then folded the wheelchair into the back.
Nobody said much until the gym disappeared behind them.
“Did you show the message to the police?” Ben asked.
“Not yet.”
“Then tonight,” Marcus said.
Daniel nodded.
Émilie sat in the second row, holding the ribbon from her dress.
“Tell me about the letter.”
“Em—”
“No. You told me not to go anywhere with him. You don’t get to say that and then tell me everything’s fine.”
Daniel looked at her in the mirror.
He seemed older under the dashboard lights.
“You’re right.”
The letter had arrived six days before the crash.
It came from Ruth Bell, a former dispatcher at Ellison Transit, where Daniel had once worked as a mechanic.
Ruth said vehicles were being sent out with unresolved safety problems. Inspection records were being changed. Daniel’s old identification number appeared on approvals he had never signed.
She had mailed him copies because she no longer trusted the company office.
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Émilie asked.
“I did. I filed a complaint. Then I called Ruth.”
“What happened?”
“We were supposed to meet the following Monday.”
The crash happened Sunday.
For the first few weeks afterward, Daniel had needed help remembering which day it was. Surgeries came one after another. June handled bills. The letter sat in his kitchen drawer while the rest of his life narrowed to pain, medicine, and whether he would ever stand again.
“Then last week,” he said, “a lawyer from Ellison Transit called.”
“Why?”
“He wanted me to sign a statement saying I’d approved the shuttle’s brakes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Luis tightened his hands on the wheel.
“I told you something was wrong with that van.”
“You told the police,” Daniel said. “That matters.”
At home, June opened the door before they reached it.
Her eyes went straight to Émilie.
“What happened?”
“Someone threatened Dad.”
Daniel gave his sister a tired look.
June’s expression hardened.
“Then we start there.”
She pulled the kitchen drawer open.
Inside lay an envelope.
Daniel frowned.
May you like
The flap had been slit twice.
And the thick stack of copies Ruth had mailed him was gone.
