Chapter 10 - The Empty Back Seat
Adrian didn't shout. That frightened me more than if he had. He pulled his car to the shoulder, called emergency services, and gave them every detail while I called the school. The principal confirmed a woman wearing a hospital badge had collected Sophie ten minutes earlier. Security footage showed a blue sedan with a cracked rear taillight.
“I never signed anything,” I told the officer. “Please check the handwriting.”
“We will. We need you available for a formal statement.”
Adrian stared at the road. “She thinks I stopped looking for her mother.”
I couldn't bear the way he said it. “Then show her she's wrong.”
Price issued an alert. Naomi's investigator checked traffic cameras with police approval. Marcus's phone went straight to voicemail. Holt could not be reached at his listed apartment.
At six that evening, Adrian received a video call. Sophie sat at a small kitchen table in an unfamiliar room, unharmed but terrified. A masked woman stood behind her.
“Tell your daddy you want to come home,” the woman said.
“Daddy,” Sophie whispered, “please don't give them Mommy's book.”
The call ended.
“What book?” Price asked.
Adrian turned toward me. “Evelyn kept a red leather notebook. I thought it was her journal. After she died, it disappeared.”
Sophie had said the words deliberately, as if she was delivering a message her mother taught her. I remembered the drawing from the study: a warehouse with seventeen doors. In the corner was a bright red square.
I opened the scanned image on my phone and enlarged it. The red square sat above a child's handwritten phrase: WHERE THE WINTER FLOWERS SLEEP.
“The greenhouse,” I said.
May you like
Adrian was already reaching for his keys when a new message lit up his phone.
BRING THE NOTEBOOK BY MIDNIGHT. COME WITHOUT THE POLICE OR THE GIRL STAYS WITH US.
