Chapter 7 - The Man in the Recording
I didn't show Sophie the photograph. I showed Adrian, Naomi, and the detective assigned to my father's missing-person case, Daniel Price. Price had been a junior investigator when Owen vanished. He admitted he'd pushed for a broader search but had been reassigned.
“Your father wasn't reckless,” Price told me. “He documented everything. Then the file went missing.”
“Who took it?”
“I've spent three years trying to answer that.”
Naomi arranged security without letting the estate guards know the details. The threat said my father would die tonight; nobody wanted to test it. Adrian agreed to meet whoever sent it, but Price warned that would expose him to an ambush.
At nine, a message arrived from an unknown number: UNION TERMINAL. PLATFORM FOUR. OLIVIA ALONE.
I went with a discreet police team observing from a distance. A freight train thundered past. A man in a brown cap approached, handed me an envelope, and hurried away before I could ask his name.
Inside was a photograph of my father in a hospital bed, dated two days earlier. Under it sat a memory card and a note: HE KNOWS WHAT THE CONTAINERS HOLD.
Price took the card to Naomi's specialist. At midnight we watched grainy footage shot from the back of a warehouse truck. Men moved unmarked coolers into a storage room. A voice ordered them to change the labels before a hospital inspection. A second man answered, “Marcus wants the original stock gone before Monday.”
The next image showed someone climbing into the truck to stop the recording. I froze. He wore the same blue-striped shirt as my father in his last family photograph.
“Owen?” Price murmured.
My father looked into the camera. His mouth moved, but there was no sound. He held up one hand, displaying three fingers, then pointed downward.
“Three floors below,” I whispered.
May you like
Adrian shook his head. “Or three days. We need more context.”
The specialist paused the frame. Under my father's hand, painted on the concrete floor, was an arrow and a number: B3.
