Chapter 12 - The Garage
“Don't go alone,” I told Daniel.
“She says she can explain.”
“She can explain in a room with witnesses.”
He looked at the messages. “She's my wife.”
“And you are my son. Both things can be true without making this safe.”
Daniel agreed to meet Vanessa in the hotel's public cafe instead. Miriam advised him to document the invitation and make no promises. At nine, Vanessa didn't appear. At 9:12, he received a call from an unknown number.
It was her voice, thin and frantic.
“Daniel, I didn't know he would go this far.”
“Who?”
“My father. He said if I left him now, he'd put everything on me.”
“Where are you?”
She breathed hard. “The garage. I need the copy of that letter. Please.”
A crash sounded behind her. She cried out, and the line cut off.
Daniel ran for the elevators. Martin and I followed, with security already on the radio. In the garage we found Vanessa's cream-colored handbag beside a concrete pillar. Her phone lay beneath a parked car. She was nowhere in sight.
A guard replayed the garage camera. Vanessa entered at 8:58. A black SUV pulled in seconds later. Charles got out, spoke to her, then pulled her toward the passenger door. She resisted. The camera lost them behind a support column. When the SUV reappeared, she was inside.
Martin called the police and preserved the footage.
Daniel stood staring at the empty parking spot. “He took her.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. For all the harm she'd done, Vanessa was still a person in danger.
“We get her back,” I said. “Then we deal with what she did.”
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Before the police arrived, a message appeared on my phone from a number I didn't recognize.
BRING THE STORAGE KEY TO PIER NINE. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE.
