Chapter 11 - The Boy in the Picture
Marisol stared at the screen until Nico's face blurred.
“That's Caleb Rourke,” Owen said. “He used to work nights at the garages. I fired him for stealing access cards.”
Elias turned on him. “Then why does he still have one?”
“Because he kept a copy. Or someone gave him a new one.”
“Enough,” Giata said. “He's Marisol's brother, not a problem on a whiteboard.”
Detective Price took the phone. She froze the image and enlarged the background: a yellow warning sign, an industrial sink, and a strip of water visible through dirty windows.
“Cold storage,” she said. “Probably one of the river warehouses. We can narrow it down.”
“Then go,” Marisol pleaded.
“We go carefully,” Price said. “A rushed rescue becomes a funeral.”
Marisol wanted to scream at her. Instead, she remembered Nico at thirteen, secretly saving lunch money to buy her new dance shoes. She had thrown the shoes away after their father's death, furious at the idea of anything beautiful.
Elias drove her to the garage where Nico worked. Tools littered the floor. Nico's bike was chained outside, his lunch still in the fridge. On the back of a work order he'd written: MARI, DON'T FORGET YOU PROMISED TO TEACH ME TO DANCE AT MY WEDDING.
She folded the paper with shaking fingers.
“He wrote that as a joke,” she said. “I told him he had two left feet.”
Elias stood beside her. “We'll bring him home.”
“Don't promise what you can't control.”
He nodded. “Then I'll promise not to stop trying.”
Nia called while they were leaving. “I got Mercy Hospital's old billing archive. The doctor who signed Mateo's final chart wasn't his surgeon.”
“Who was it?”
“Julian Mercer.”
Marisol gripped the phone. Mercer had been sitting at Giata's bedside for three years, prescribing silence one little pill at a time.
Nia's voice dropped. “And there's another signature on the payment approval.”
May you like
“Dominic?”
“No. Elias.”
