Chapter 14 - The Man in Cell Nine
Mara couldn't make herself speak. Samuel's funeral replayed in her mind: a sealed casket, four people in attendance, rain striking the cemetery grass.
Ruiz got the coroner on a secure line. The body had been switched before the prison released it. Dental records belonged to an unknown prisoner. Samuel Vale's current location was classified under a witness-transfer order signed by Graham Cross.
“Is he alive?” Mara demanded.
“We don't know,” Ruiz said.
“Then find out.”
June traced the order to a privately operated detention facility outside the city. It was called Briar House, although nothing on the satellite photos resembled a house.
“Tonight's hearing starts at eight,” June said. “If we go after Samuel, we'll miss the chance to enter Meridian with the commission.”
Mara looked at Lily. They had both spent half their lives waiting for their father to come home.
Lily shook her head. “Graham wants us to choose.”
Adrian leaned over the map. “We don't have to. Ruiz and June take Mara to Briar House. Lily and I go to Meridian.”
Mara objected immediately. “I'm not letting Lily walk into his building without me.”
Lily gave her a sad smile. “You don't get to make every choice for me. You missed twelve years. I'm here now.”
The words hurt, but Mara understood. Lily wasn't a child anymore.
They split up beside the diner. Adrian put a burner phone in Mara's hand.
“One call,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, press the side button twice.”
“What happens then?”
“I come get you.”
“Even if you're in trouble?”
“Especially then.”
For a heartbeat they stood close enough to kiss. Instead Mara stepped back, and Adrian let her.
At Briar House, Ruiz posed as a state inspector. June jammed the outer cameras. Mara followed them through a service entrance into a corridor of locked cells.
A thin voice drifted from cell nine. “Mara?”
She turned. A man with white hair stood behind the bars. His face was older, but his eyes were her father's.
“Dad?”
May you like
He gripped the bars. “Baby, you shouldn't have come.”
Then an alarm sounded, and a voice over the intercom said, “Cell nine. Execute the transfer.”
