Chapter 6 - A Brother for Sale
Ethan swept the bouquet into the sink and drowned it under running water. Somewhere inside the stems, a small red light blinked twice and died.
Celeste stared at the ruined flowers. “You don't understand. If he thinks I'm helping you, he'll hurt Eli.”
Nora laughed once, sharp and joyless. “You had sixteen years to tell me I had a brother.”
Celeste's hands shook. “He took Eli when he was six. He sent me a picture every birthday to prove he was alive. If I spoke, he promised I'd never see him again.”
“Where's the trade?” he asked.
“Old train depot. Midnight.”
“It's a trap.”
“Yes,” Celeste said. “But he expects us to know that.”
Nora tugged off her medical bracelet. “Then we give him what he expects. A desperate mother and two idiots with a button.”
At the depot, rain fell through the broken roof. Ethan approached the center platform alone, the brass casing wrapped in his fist. Nora watched from an elevated walkway with a stolen police radio. Celeste waited beside a dark sedan.
A boy in a gray hoodie stepped out of a freight car. He was older than the boy in the photograph, lean and wary, with a small scar under one eyebrow.
“Eli?” Celeste called.
The boy turned. “Mom?”
Ethan felt his chest loosen. Then he saw the red dot on Eli's throat.
“Button on the ground,” a voice ordered over the station speakers.
Ethan crouched. “Let the kid come first.”
The voice chuckled. “You keep talking like you have leverage.”
Ethan placed the casing on the rails. Eli took three steps. A shot cracked. He fell.
Celeste screamed and ran forward, but Nora's voice burst through Ethan's earpiece.
“Don't move! That's not blood. It's a paint charge!”
Eli sprang up, yanked a pistol from his hoodie, and pointed it at Celeste.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “I work for Victor now.”
Celeste stopped in the middle of the tracks. Her son kept the gun trained on her, his hand perfectly steady.
Ethan held still. The boy had the posture of someone who'd trained for years, but his eyes kept flicking toward the empty platform. Waiting for approval.
Eli flinched. It was enough. Ethan kicked loose gravel into the boy's face and tackled him before the gun fired. They hit the rail hard. Eli drove a knee into Ethan's ribs. Ethan trapped his wrist and wrestled the pistol away.
A spotlight blazed above them. Nora shouted from the walkway, “More coming!”
Men poured through the far doors. Ethan handed the unloaded pistol to Celeste and hauled Eli upright.
They sprinted through the depot's maintenance tunnel. Nora met them at the stairwell carrying a fire extinguisher. She sprayed a white cloud behind them and slammed the gate. By the time the guards broke through, the four had reached Ethan's van.
Eli sat in the back, wrists zip-tied, furious and silent. Celeste kept looking at him like a miracle she didn't trust herself to touch.
Nora leaned close to Ethan. “The button's gone.”
“It was empty,” he said. “I kept the film.”
They drove to a roadside motel on the edge of the city. Inside, Eli demanded a phone. Ethan refused. The boy knocked over a lamp, then sank on the bed and began shaking.
“I didn't know they were going to shoot at her,” he whispered.
“I know what Victor told you about me,” she said. “You deserve the truth.”
Eli covered his face. “He told me you sold me.”
Celeste knelt. “I spent every day trying to get you back.”
Eli looked at Nora. “Then why'd you keep her?”
Before anyone could answer, the motel television clicked on by itself. Victor appeared on the screen beside a live digital countdown.
“Good evening, family,” he said. “Thirty minutes until the first real body drops.”
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The camera turned to reveal the Mercy Hospital room where Nora had been lying. A nurse entered carrying a tray.
Strapped to the nurse's chest was a bomb.
