Chapter 25 - The Price of a Promise

I grabbed for the phone. "That's her. That's Mom. Call them back!"

Elias held it where I could see the picture but not dial the number. "We don't know who took it. We don't know when."

"She wore that green sweater on Tuesday," I said. "I told her it looked like grass."

"Then she's been alive within the last week. That's something."

We stopped at a highway rest area so Greta could call us through a secure video link. Greta gave me simple instructions for monitoring his wet diapers and feeding. She also arranged a pediatric appointment for the following morning in a neighboring county.

"Kids don't owe adults heroics," she told me. "Your job is to stay safe."

"Then whose job is Mom?"

"Ours," Elias said from beside me.

Greta looked straight at him. "Be very clear about what 'ours' means."

He said he had worked security for Harlan's business years earlier, before he founded a freight company. He knew the back roads, warehouses, and men Harlan used to scare people quiet. He also knew a federal investigator who had been trying to connect missing disaster funds across three counties.

"Why should I trust you?" I asked.

Elias sat down on the curb rather than tower over me. "You shouldn't, just because I showed up with groceries. Watch what I do. Decide from that."

"Mom wrote your name."

"She pulled my younger sister out of the river during the flood when everybody else thought the bridge was gone. Then she stayed at the hospital till morning. My sister has two little girls now."

"I never found a way to repay her."

I studied him. "You're wearing a suit worth more than our rent."

"I was at Harlan's fundraiser tonight. Somebody tipped me off he was hunting for you. I left before dessert."

He showed me a receipt timestamped just before my text and a photograph of him beside Harlan under a banner that read HELP BELLWETHER REBUILD. I recognized two other men in the picture: Deputy Crowley and the one who'd held the gasoline can.

Then I noticed something behind them. A woman in a green sweater, half-hidden by a catering cart.

"Zoom in," I said.

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Elias did. The woman was my mother.

And the date on the photograph was yesterday.