Chapter 13 - The Deal Grant Offered

Grant Mercer called again at six in the morning. This time he asked for Paul directly. Leah supervised the contact and documented every word.

“I want my daughters,” Grant said.

“You can discuss custody through the court,” Paul answered.

“Keep reading from your little script. Richard tried doing the right thing, too.”

“Where is my brother?”

“Where he put himself. Ask him about the children who never made it into the official records.”

Grant offered an exchange: a flash drive that Elena had supposedly stolen, in return for Richard's location. Paul refused to negotiate on his own. Leah treated the call as both a threat and a possible lead, preserving what investigators could lawfully gather.

The hospital had moved the girls to a more secure floor and tightened visitor screening. Nora was furious about it. “I didn't do anything wrong. Why do I have to hide?”

“You shouldn't have to,” Elena told her. “The adults are trying to fix what the adults broke.”

Violet squeezed Nora's hand. “You saved me.”

Nora shook her head. “I should've run sooner.”

Paul knelt beside them. “You came when you could. That's what matters.”

Nora and Violet spent the afternoon making cards for the paramedics. Violet drew the ambulance as a giant white rectangle with wheels as big as the moon. Nora drew herself holding Violet's hand. At the bottom, in letters too large for the paper, she wrote WE GOT THERE. Elena put both cards inside her purse, where she could reach them whenever fear threatened to drown out facts.

Later Elena remembered Richard mentioning a place to keep copies of important things: an old library's returned-book drop, because nobody thought to search among battered paperbacks. Paul found a reference in Richard's old notebook: HAWTHORNE / 791.43 / BLUE.

At the Hawthorne Public Library, the clerk recognized the number. It wasn't a shelf code. It was an old locker identifier from the building's basement archive.

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Inside the locker sat a blue lunchbox with Richard's handwriting on the lid:

PAUL — IF THE GIRLS ARE SAFE, OPEN THIS.