Chapter 8 - A Line I Would Not Cross
I called Hannah before I called the police.
She answered on the third ring.
“Please tell me you’re not calling to apologize again.”
“Where are the boys?”
Silence.
“At school. Why?”
“Have the hotel keep them inside when they return. I’m sending—”
“You’re sending nobody until you tell me what happened.”
I told her.
She did not cry.
She got furious.
“Someone followed my brothers?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re saying this like a business problem.”
“I’m trying not to scare you.”
“I’m already scared.”
That stopped me.
Denise contacted Chicago police and a private security firm, but I made one thing clear: Hannah would decide what protection she accepted. No men parked outside her door unless she agreed. No tracking her phone. No controlling her movement in the name of safety.
She agreed to a plainclothes guard near the boys’ school and nothing more.
By evening, our internal security team traced the envelope to a courier paid in cash by a man using a fake name. A traffic camera caught his car.
The registration led to a contractor who had worked for Martin Vale twice before.
We had enough for investigators to ask questions, not enough for an arrest.
At nine that night, I was still in my office when Hannah called again.
Her voice had changed.
“Eli isn’t here.”
I stood so fast my chair hit the wall.
“What do you mean?”
“He came back from school. I saw him. He was angry because I wouldn’t let him go meet a friend. Then I went downstairs to get dinner. When I came back, he was gone.”
“Phone?”
“Left on the bed.”
“Any note?”
“No.”
Then she gasped.
“What?”
“There’s a message on the hotel tablet. He must have used it.”
“Read it.”
Her voice trembled for the first time.
“It says, ‘I can make Mom’s debt disappear. Come alone. Ask for Dad.’”
Hannah went completely quiet.
I knew enough of her history to understand why.
May you like
Their father had been gone for six years.
And suddenly, on the same week Hannah became a public witness against a multimillion-dollar housing scheme, he had found them.
