Chapter 10 - The Man in the Photograph
I stared at the message until the letters blurred.
“Caleb?” I typed.
No answer.
I called. The number was disconnected.
At breakfast Adrian found me sitting at his kitchen island with untouched coffee.
“You look like you were awake all night.”
“Almost.”
I showed him the message. He read it twice without changing expression.
“Do you think it's your brother?”
“I don't know. It came from the number our mother kept alive until she died.”
His eyes lowered. “I'm sorry.”
“You don't know me well enough to be sorry.”
“No,” he said quietly. “But I know what it feels like to lose somebody and discover you may have stopped looking too soon.”
I wanted to believe him. That was the problem.
Ortiz called with news: Northline Medical had once shared an office address with a subsidiary of Vale Harbor Group. Adrian claimed he knew nothing about it. Forensic accountants were going through the records.
Then she sent an image from a company holiday party taken twelve years earlier. There was Marcus Wynn near a buffet table. A younger Vivienne stood beside him. In the background, half hidden behind a column, was a man in a gray coat.
He had Caleb’s crescent-and-stars logo on his badge.
And beside him, unmistakably, stood Adrian Vale.
I took the phone to Adrian in his study.
“Explain this.”
He studied the image. “I remember that party. We had just acquired a medical logistics company.”
“Did you meet that man?”
“I probably met three hundred people that night.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Then the answer is I don't remember.”
I wanted to scream. Instead I placed the phone on his desk and waited.
Adrian opened a locked drawer and removed a slim folder.
“I found this yesterday when I went through my old contracts. I was afraid to show you until I understood it.”
Inside was a transfer authorization from the year Caleb vanished. The patient name was redacted, but I knew the date. I knew the hospital. And in the margin was a handwritten note:
MINOR ELLIS — PRIORITY CUSTODY.
May you like
At the bottom sat Adrian’s signature.
This time he didn't deny it.
