Chapter 6 - The Wrong Badge
Nico reached the sitting room in twelve seconds. The hallway was empty, the door partly open.
"Sophie?" he called.
A crash came from the adjoining pantry.
He ran toward it and found Tessa backed against the counter, holding a metal serving tray like a shield. Sophie crouched behind her, silent with terror. A man in a maintenance jacket struggled to free his wrist from the pantry door, which Tessa had slammed on it.
"Stay down," Nico told the girl.
The stranger reached into his pocket. Nico hit his arm against the counter before he could pull anything out. The object clattered across the tile: a black plastic syringe case.
Simone and an officer arrived seconds later. They handcuffed the intruder while Nico helped Tessa move Sophie away from the broken glass.
"He said he was here to check a leak," Tessa explained. "Then he asked for the little girl by name."
Sophie pressed Patch over her mouth.
"He had Mommy's picture on his phone."
Inside the man's pocket, police found a key card for the old freight elevator and a note with instructions to deliver "the package" to a white van. His real name was Travis Bell. The maintenance badge had belonged to a man who died eight months earlier.
Simone took photographs and called for secure transport.
"We are moving Sophie," she said. "And this time you don't get to argue."
"I'm not arguing," Nico replied.
But Sophie was.
"I can't leave. Mommy said she'd come get me."
Nico crouched again, his knee cracking against the floor. "She will. We're making sure you're somewhere she can find you."
"Do grown-ups always say that when they don't know?"
He considered lying. It would have been easy and, for a moment, kinder.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "I'm trying not to."
Sophie placed the blue bracelet in his hand. "Then give this back to her. She gets sad when she loses things I make."
The police escorted her into a vehicle with Tessa and a child protection specialist. Nico watched until its taillights disappeared.
On the floor beside the broken syringe case, Dahlia noticed a shipping label stuck to the man's shoe. Three letters had been printed above a barcode.
May you like
RIV.
The same three letters appeared on the company's port warehouses.
