Chapter 13 - The Line Through Our Faces
The school had done everything right. The receptionist refused to release Ava, copied the woman's visitor badge, and called Lena immediately. Still, seeing that photograph made me shake harder than the day I'd learned Liam was dead.
"This has nothing to do with the case now," Lena whispered. "This is my little girl."
"It always had something to do with her," I said. "That's why Liam fought to get those supplies where they belonged."
Grant assigned a threat-response team to the family and helped Lena arrange a temporary place to stay. I packed Ava's stuffed rabbit while she watched from the doorway.
"Are we going somewhere fun?" she asked.
"Somewhere safe."
"Is it because somebody doesn't like Daddy?"
I knelt, wincing as my bad knee bent. "Your daddy tried to help people. Somebody got angry about that. But there are good people working on it now."
She thought a moment. "Are you one of them?"
"I'm trying."
Cora identified the woman in the school photo from a still image Grant showed her. It wasn't Quinn. It was Denise Ralston, Shaw's personal security coordinator. The badge used a fake last name, but the school camera captured her license plate.
That night police found Ralston's abandoned rental car at a motel. Its trunk held boxes of cheap burner phones and a list of people connected to the convoy. Owen's name was at the top. Ava's was at the bottom.
Grant called with news just before midnight. "Ralston left a receipt for a bus ticket under Quinn's name. Somebody may be trying to make it look like Mara fled voluntarily."
"Then where is Mara?"
"We're looking. And we found something else in the car."
It was a printed copy of the medical log. The entry at 04:31 had been crossed out in red ink. In the margin, someone had written, DO NOT RECORD HOLD ORDER.
At the bottom, beside the initials W.P., stood a second set of initials no one had mentioned before.
May you like
D.V.
Derek Voss hadn't merely witnessed the order. He'd acknowledged it.
