Chapter 7 - The Empty Hiding Place
Eli saw the photograph before Jax could hide it.
“Mom!”
Jax caught him by the shoulders. “Don’t look.”
“She’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jax forced himself to study the image.
Hannah’s hair was tangled. Duct tape circled one wrist, but her eyes were open and furious. Behind her was corrugated metal, a yellow hazard stripe, and a hanging chain.
A warehouse.
On the bottom edge of the photo, someone had written in black marker:
BRING THE KEY. MIDNIGHT.
Vince checked his watch. “Two hours.”
Jax pulled the knife from the beam.
Eli grabbed his sleeve. “We go get her.”
“We will.”
“Now.”
“We need to know where.”
Vince lifted the photograph. “Hazard stripe. Chain hoist. Could be the old freight depot.”
Jax shook his head. “Too obvious.”
Eli pointed at a reflection in a metal panel behind Hannah.
“What’s that?”
Jax leaned closer.
In the reflection was a red-and-white sign, backward.
RIVER COLD STORAGE.
His blood went cold.
River Cold Storage had burned twelve years earlier.
That was where Cole had supposedly died.
Vince said what Jax was thinking. “Place has been abandoned since the fire.”
“Not abandoned enough.”
They returned to the truck.
Jax called one person he still trusted: retired federal agent Miriam Shaw.
She answered with, “If this is a sales call, I’m hanging up.”
“It’s Jax Mercer.”
Silence.
Then: “You’re not supposed to contact me.”
“Cole’s alive.”
Another silence, longer this time.
“I know,” she said.
Jax almost drove off the road.
“You knew?”
“I found out three weeks ago.”
“And you didn’t call?”
“I was trying to find out who inside the old task force helped him disappear.”
“Bell.”
“Bell is one of them.”
“One?”
Miriam exhaled. “Jax, there were six names we never identified.”
“I had their names in the ledger.”
“Had?”
“It’s gone.”
She swore quietly.
Jax looked at Eli in the rearview mirror.
“Cole has Hannah.”
Miriam’s voice hardened. “Where are you going?”
“River Cold Storage.”
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m looking at the building right now.”
May you like
Jax sat straighter.
Miriam whispered, “And Hannah isn’t the only prisoner inside.”
