Chapter 16 - Bluebird
Ethan ran outside.
Ortiz already had Rachel on speaker. Her voice shook through the rain.
"She was in the bedroom ten minutes ago," Rachel said. "I went downstairs to answer the door. When I came back, the window was open."
"Why would she leave?"
"Because she got a voicemail," Rachel said. "I'm forwarding it now."
Ortiz opened the message and hit play.
Ethan heard his own voice.
"Bella, it's Dad. Bluebird. Come out through the side gate. Rachel knows. I need you to hurry."
His knees almost gave out.
The camera in Isabella's bedroom had recorded him creating the code word. Beatriz had heard everything.
He turned toward the lake house.
Beatriz was no longer on the stairs.
"Where is she?"
Martin pointed toward the back door. "She ran."
Ortiz rushed past Ethan with the deputies.
Martin tried to follow, but one deputy forced him against the wall and cuffed him.
Ethan grabbed his collar. "Who took Isabella?"
"I don't know."
"You knew this was coming."
"I knew Beatriz wanted leverage. I told her no."
"You don't get credit for saying no after stealing from a child for three years."
Outside, tires screamed.
Beatriz's sedan tore away from the rear gravel drive.
Ortiz shouted into her radio. "Vehicle heading north on Lake Road! Possible child abduction!"
Ethan ran toward his SUV.
Ortiz blocked him.
"You're riding with me."
"That's my daughter."
"Exactly. You're no use to her wrapped around a tree. Get in."
They followed the road through sheets of rain.
Two miles later they found Beatriz's sedan abandoned near a closed marina.
The driver's door was open.
No Isabella.
No Beatriz.
On the front seat lay Sofia's trust file, soaked through.
Beside it was Isabella's stuffed rabbit.
Ethan picked it up.
The seam in its stomach had been torn wider.
Something hard pressed against his thumb.
A tiny plastic bracelet.
Isabella's school field-trip bracelet from the previous spring.
On it she had written in pen:
GREEN HOUSE.
"What does that mean?" Ortiz asked.
Ethan looked across the marina toward the dark shoreline.
Then he remembered.
Sofia's father had owned an abandoned greenhouse two miles around the lake, hidden behind an old orchard.
Isabella had visited it once when she was five.
May you like
She remembered.
And somehow, while terrified, she had left him a clue.
