Chapter 13 - The River's Blind Eye

The river's blind eye was a bend behind the abandoned pumping station, where the current disappeared beneath a wall of concrete and returned fifty yards downstream. Mom had shown me the place the summer I learned to swim. She'd warned me never to approach the water alone.

"She used to hide scavenger-hunt clues there," I told Agent Lin. "Not in the water. In a mailbox nailed to a dead oak tree."

Lin wrote it down. She didn't ask me to lead a rescue. She asked a local search team to examine the area while I stayed at the supervised house with Milo.

"I want to come," I said.

"I know. But your mother would want you behind a locked door with people who can protect you."

Elias wasn't allowed into our room while his background was under review. He sat with his lawyer in the interview office, answering questions about every Harlan contract he'd ever signed. Once he looked through the glass at Milo sleeping in my arms. He raised a hand. I didn't wave back.

At the pumping station, investigators found the weathered mailbox exactly where I described. Inside were a wet paper bag, a bus schedule from last winter, and an empty glass jar. Nothing that looked like a secret worth killing for.

Then a search officer noticed a small strip of metal wired to the underside of the box. Stamped into it were seven digits and a letter: 0618-214B.

"A locker number?" Luz asked on the secure call.

"Maybe," Agent Lin said. "We've seen 214 before."

I remembered the photograph of Mom at the service keypad. Storage bay 214, loading level B. The first four numbers were June eighteenth, the day the floodwater entered our street. Mom had made us write that date at the top of our insurance forms.

Lin's team obtained a warrant for the archive and arranged to enter with independent officers. While they waited, I tried to do math homework. At four in the afternoon the warrant team went in. The bay held broken desks, soggy carpeting, and empty shelves. There were fresh tire tracks in the dust.

A single sheet lay beside the freight elevator: a copy of Mom's testimony with every mention of Judge Vane blacked out.

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On the reverse, she had written one sentence in pencil.

THEY'RE MOVING ME BEFORE THE STORM.