Chapter 8 - The Price of Silence

Mrs. Alvarez's diner was empty when they arrived. Coffee cups sat on the counter, still warm. A pink shoe lay beneath booth seven.

Ethan picked it up. "Lily."

Mara found Mrs. Alvarez in the kitchen, tied to a chair but breathing. She cut the ropes while Olivia called emergency services from a landline.

"Two men," the nurse gasped. "They knew my name. One wore a police badge. Lily fought them. She scratched his face."

"Which way?" Mara asked.

"North. Toward the freight yards."

Olivia's mother, Dr. Evelyn Hart, had built a reputation as a saint in designer heels. She ran the ethics board at St. Agnes and had personally comforted Daniel's family after his death. Olivia explained between broken breaths that Evelyn had threatened to have her nursing license revoked if she spoke.

"You still married into the family," Ethan said.

"I fell in love with you before I knew your last name. Then I found the records, and I thought if I got close enough to Charles I could prove it. Every day I waited, it got harder to tell you."

"You should've trusted me."

"I know."

That answer took some of the heat out of his anger. Not all of it.

Mrs. Alvarez remembered a name one abductor used over the phone: Pier Nine. Mara recognized it as a private warehouse owned by the Whitmore Foundation.

They reached the freight yard just after sunrise. Rain clouds turned the stacked containers the color of old bruises. From an upper catwalk Ethan heard Lily screaming, "I don't know the password!"

Mara grabbed his arm. "We need a distraction."

He took a rock and smashed a security camera. Sirens blared. Guards streamed toward the entrance while Mara climbed a loading ladder and Olivia slipped through a side bay.

Ethan reached the catwalk first. Lily sat tied to a chair beside a metal case. A guard held a phone against her ear.

"Tell your uncle," the guard said, "what happens if he doesn't bring the drive."

Lily looked up, spotted Ethan, and stopped crying.

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"Uncle Ethan," she said loudly, "look behind you!"

He turned just as the second guard swung a steel bar at his head.