Chapter 15 - The Trade Nobody Expected
“Absolutely not,” Shaw said when Olivia offered to go.
“She asked for me.”
“That's why you don't go alone.”
They treated the call as evidence, not an instruction. Analysts traced background noise in the video—a freight crossing bell, a dog barking, a train horn. The timing narrowed the possible sites near the old airstrip.
Ellen watched from a protected medical unit, her hand locked around Ben's. “Don't let them make you believe you're the only one who can save her,” she told Olivia.
“I won't.”
But Olivia knew why Kessler wanted her. Mara's drive had exposed payments; Olivia could testify about the people behind them. The kidnapper hoped fear would make her recant.
Shaw arranged a controlled contact at an abandoned hangar while surveillance teams quietly searched the nearby warehouses. Olivia wore a concealed microphone and stood where cameras could see her. Her breathing sounded impossibly loud in her earpiece.
A black van entered the hangar. Eleanor Kessler stepped out wearing a pale coat and the same citrus perfume Olivia remembered from her mother's false funeral.
“You've grown into your reputation,” Kessler said.
“Where's Sophie?”
“Alive. Which is more than I can say for your old friends.”
“Show her to me.”
Kessler held out a phone with a live video. Sophie was in a storage room beside a painted number fourteen. Olivia kept her eyes on the screen while the camera microphone carried her words to Shaw.
“You're afraid of Mara's evidence,” Olivia said. “You wouldn't have come yourself otherwise.”
Kessler's mouth twitched. “Evidence only matters if someone believes the witness.”
“Then why did you have my mother buried?”
“Because you believed it.”
Olivia felt rage rise like heat, but she held it. “This ends tonight.”
Kessler stepped close. “It ends when you say the drive was forged.”
Olivia looked past her toward a warehouse window. A faint light blinked three times, paused, then three more. The pattern was one Mara had taught her: friend nearby.
May you like
Sophie was sending a signal.
THE MARK THEY TRIED TO ERASE •
