Chapter 4 - The Wrong Car
Heat struck Daniel like a giant hand. He fell over Eli and dragged Claire behind a concrete pillar as glass rained across the asphalt. Alarms erupted. A woman screamed for someone named Jason. Smoke rolled over the police station's glass doors.
"Eli!" Claire shouted.
"I've got him. I've got him."
Their son was crying, more frightened by his father's grip than by the blast. Daniel checked his face, his arms, his legs. No blood. Claire had a narrow cut on her forehead, but she was upright and furious.
"That wasn't our car," she said.
It wasn't. The burning minivan belonged to a woman who had parked while they were inside. Their own blue sedan stood untouched two spaces farther down. Maybe coincidence. Maybe someone had mistaken the vehicles. Daniel preferred coincidence. The detectives did not.
By evening, every local station was talking about the parking-lot explosion. Malik told them investigators suspected an incendiary device, but he refused to draw conclusions before the bomb squad reported. The family moved into a downtown hotel under a false reservation name, with an officer stationed in the lobby.
Claire sat on the bed, holding Eli's bright blue shorts while he splashed in a bath. "I should've told you about Owen."
"Yes," Daniel said.
She stared down. "That's it?"
"You want me to say it's fine. I can't. I'm scared out of my mind, Claire. But we can be scared and still stay on the same side."
A faint laugh escaped her. "You practice that speech?"
"For the last four hours. It was better in my head."
She moved into his arms. For a moment they were only two tired people in a room that smelled of hotel soap, listening to their toddler sing nonsense behind a closed bathroom door.
Then Daniel's phone buzzed. A photograph showed their front porch, taken in daylight. On the top step sat a small red metal box. A note was taped to it: BRING WHAT'S INSIDE TO THE OLD HOUSE. COME ALONE.
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Under the photograph came another message.
YOUR WIFE KNOWS WHERE THE SECOND KEY IS.
