Chapter 11 - The Room With No Windows

Nathan recognized the sign in the photograph. "Northline rents storage at the old ferry depot. My company paid them for environmental testing. Owen said they were a licensed contractor."

Moreno passed the address to her team. Within minutes she learned that Northline had never held the required license. Its listed owner was a shell company registered through Owen's attorney.

"That doesn't make the owner a kidnapper," she warned. "But it makes the address worth checking."

I kept seeing Mia's face. Her eyes weren't focused on the camera. They were fixed on something beyond it, as though she wanted us to notice a detail the captor had missed.

"Look at the shelf," I said. "The orange sticker."

Moreno zoomed into the image. The sticker bore a black number: 14.

"Bay fourteen," Nathan said. "I unloaded supplies there once. It has a rear access road."

A tactical team was dispatched. Moreno moved us to a secured room and asked Nathan not to contact his brother. He handed over his phone again without complaint.

The call came twenty minutes later. Officers had entered the depot. Bay fourteen contained a chair, torn tape, and an empty water bottle. Mia was gone. But a caretaker reported a white delivery truck leaving only seven minutes before police arrived.

"They're ahead of us," I whispered.

"Not necessarily," Moreno said. "A license-plate camera might have it."

Nathan's mother appeared in the doorway with a lawyer in a camel coat. "This has gone far enough. My sons are being humiliated over a terrible misunderstanding."

Nathan looked at her. "Mia has been kidnapped."

"You don't know that Owen has anything to do with it."

"Neither do you," he said. "Unless there's something you've been hiding."

Celeste's polished confidence cracked. She stared at me, then at the gauze on my hands.

"I told him not to touch you," she murmured.

Moreno stepped forward. "Told whom, Mrs. Mercer?"

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Celeste lowered herself into a chair. Her lawyer put a hand on her shoulder, but she barely noticed.

"My son," she said. "I told Owen the wedding was not worth hurting an innocent woman."