Chapter 13 - Seven Minutes Too Late

The road to the pumping station ran between empty fields and a line of dark trees. Officers reached the gate to find the white truck abandoned, its engine still warm. Both men had vanished.

Mia had too, until a search dog pulled toward a locked maintenance shed behind the station.

She was inside, crouched behind a stack of rusted pipe fittings. Someone had taped her wrists. When the officers called her name, she didn't move.

"Tell me something only my sister would know," she demanded.

One officer relayed the request to Moreno. I took the phone.

"Mia, when you were seven, you buried Dad's car keys in the flowerpot because he wouldn't let you drive to the grocery store. We found them when the basil died."

A broken laugh came through the speaker. "I still think I could've made it."

I began to cry, as gently as I could without hurting my face.

An ambulance took Mia to the hospital for evaluation. She had bruises, a swollen cheek, and a deep scrape on her wrist. She was alive. That was all I could process when I finally saw her.

She reached toward my dress, then stopped when she saw the stained bandage.

"Oh, Evie."

"Don't you dare apologize," I said.

"I was trying to help."

"I know."

She explained what happened. At the rehearsal, she'd seen Owen walk into the service corridor with Caleb. Owen wore a maintenance jacket over his shirt and was carrying a small plastic bottle. Mia took a photo because she'd found it strange. Later, Owen confronted her outside the hotel and demanded her phone. Caleb forced her into the delivery truck.

"I thought they were going to kill me," she said.

Nathan stood quietly at the doorway, giving us space. Mia noticed him.

"You need to see what I sent Evie," she said. "I uploaded the picture before they took my phone."

"Where?" I asked.

"The shared folder we made for Mom's photos. The one nobody else knows about."

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I remembered the folder. We had filled it with images of Mom in the garden, laughing on the porch, refusing to let us photograph her without lipstick.

Mia squeezed my arm. "Evie, the picture doesn't just show Owen. Someone handed him the bottle."