Chapter 12 - The Creek That Remembered
I knew immediately that Wren hadn't written the second message. The black ink was still fresh. Somebody had been inside the cabin while June stood twenty feet away.
"Find her," I told Marisol.
"We will. But running blind gives them two hostages."
"She's seventeen."
"Which means she made a choice. We need to understand it before we make a worse one."
We checked the camera Eli had mounted over the back steps. Wren had left alone at 5:42. A white service van followed her down the road seven minutes later. Its rear doors carried the logo of a landscaping company owned by Vale's holding group.
Marisol called in the plate. Meanwhile, I opened the old map from the locket and traced the path of the creek with my finger.
Robert and I had taken Wren there when she was little. We'd built dams out of pebbles and watched minnows flash between our feet. She knew a hole beneath the pumping station where a kid could crawl through the fence.
"She's heading for the creek," I said. "The way we used to go."
Eli drove us there in his truck. The air smelled of wet leaves and diesel. We followed the dry creek bed until the concrete walls of Gate Nine rose from the brush.
Fresh tire tracks crossed the mud. Nearby lay Wren's scarf, caught on a thorn bush.
June picked it up. "She wore this at Christmas."
A scream came from inside the pumping station.
I started running. My damaged leg nearly folded, but Eli caught me and helped me through a broken section of fence. Marisol moved ahead, pistol lowered but ready.
We reached a rusted steel door. Voices echoed beyond it.
"Tell me where the key is," a man demanded.
"I don't have it," Wren answered.
A slap cracked through the room.
Something savage rose inside me, hotter than fear. Marisol caught my elbow before I could rush in.
"Three men," she whispered. "Maybe four. We need to split them up."
Eli pointed to a maintenance walkway above the room. We climbed the steps as quietly as the metal allowed.
From the railing I saw Wren tied to a chair, a red mark across her cheek. Sheriff Calder stood beside her. On the table was Robert's old map.
May you like
Calder looked up, straight at me, and smiled.
"There she is," he said. "Our missing widow."
