Chapter 5 - A Photograph That Should Not Exist
Bear slammed the pantry door's heavy bolt and led them down the narrow alley.
Rain slapped the dumpster lids. His pickup was an old green Ford with a cracked bench seat and a child's booster cushion already waiting in back.
Rachel stopped. "Why do you have that?"
"My niece rides with me on Sundays," he answered. "Take it or leave it."
She buckled Lily in. Owen climbed beside her, watching the alley through the rear window. Bear stayed at the gate until Rachel pulled out.
Two blocks later she called her sister, Dana. No answer. Her phone showed seventeen missed calls from an unknown number. Then a photograph arrived.
It showed Owen asleep on the Bell family couch, taken through their living-room window the previous Tuesday. Beneath it was a message: YOU WERE WARNED.
Rachel's hands shook so badly she pulled into a service station.
"Don't stop," Owen said.
At the station, Rachel bought juice and crackers because the children had barely eaten. Owen refused the crackers at first, saying he wasn't hungry, and she opened the packet anyway. A few minutes later he took one and broke it in half for Lily. Rachel watched them share it in the back seat and felt a private flash of grief for how quickly fear had taught her son to act like a second parent.
"I need to think."
"That's why we keep getting caught. They don't need to know where we are. They know where you think we'll go."
The words stung because they were true. She had taken the route to Dana's house, then the highway toward her father's old cabin. Every place she chose had some connection to her past.
Lily began crying without sound. Rachel unbuckled and climbed into the back seat.
"You are not in trouble," she told her daughter. "Whatever you saw, we'll figure it out together."
Owen held up a small sticker peeled from the underside of Lily's shoe. A white square, no larger than a postage stamp.
"This wasn't here yesterday," he said.
Rachel's breath stopped. On its surface, someone had printed a tiny black number: 42.
May you like
Her phone lit again. A message from Cole appeared.
THE SECOND TRACKER IS THE ONE THAT MATTERS.
