Chapter 8 - The List in Red

The photograph of Sophie was old.

Mara could tell because her daughter was wearing the yellow raincoat she'd outgrown in April. The image showed her outside a school fundraiser, not beside any van that night.

"You need a better threat," Mara told Claire.

The woman slapped the phone shut. For a second she looked embarrassed. Then the room's door opened and a heavyset man appeared.

"Enough," he said. "Mr. Rivas wants the recording by six."

"Which Mr. Rivas?" Mara asked.

Neither answered.

Across the river, Simone spread Mara's documents across an interview-room table. The missing workers weren't random names. They had been assigned to the same cleaning crew, with shifts after midnight and no supervisor signatures.

Nico pointed to the dates. "Every disappearance happened after a Northline audit."

Dahlia found one more connection. Each missing employee had been transferred on paper to the same site: Riverton Transfer, a bonded storage business by the port in New Jersey.

"That's one of your companies," Simone said.

"A minority investment," Nico replied. "Gideon handles the contracts."

"You own thirty percent. That's not a birthday present you forgot you got."

"No. It isn't."

Nico heard what he sounded like: a powerful man explaining why the things done in his name were somebody else's fault.

"Get the warrants you need," he said. "You can have the contracts. All of them."

Simone looked at him for a long time. "I can't promise they'll only hurt your brother."

"I didn't ask you to."

The disposable camera held pictures of a warehouse loading bay, a staff van, and a woman standing beneath a sign marked RIVERTON TRANSFER. One frame showed Gideon beside a supervisor, shaking hands.

The last picture was stranger. A folded piece of paper had been taped to a wall and photographed close up. It contained ten employee names in red marker.

Nine appeared on Northline's current payroll.

The tenth name was SOPHIE REED.

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No one in the room spoke until Dahlia said, "Why would they put a child on their employee list?"