Chapter 11 - Where Flowers Sleep

We did not obey the demand to exclude police. Price helped establish a controlled recovery plan, while Naomi secured permission for investigators to enter the greenhouse. Adrian and I went in first, wearing small recording devices. We searched under benches, inside planters, and behind shelves stacked with winter bulbs.

“Evelyn spent hours here,” Adrian said. “I thought she was hiding from me.”

“Maybe she was trying to protect you.”

He shook his head. “Protection feels a lot like being shut out when nobody explains.”

Under a loose floorboard near a dormant rosebush, I found a metal biscuit tin wrapped in plastic. Inside lay the red notebook, a bank card, and a photograph of Evelyn with my father. The notebook was not a diary. It contained delivery dates, plate numbers, payment references, and names marked with red dots.

The last entry read: M. IS NOT WORKING ALONE. ASK OWEN ABOUT THE SECOND ACCOUNT.

Adrian sank onto the bench. “She knew.”

“She was collecting proof.”

We photographed the book and turned it over to Price. Naomi secured the original in an evidence bag. Then we prepared a decoy for the kidnappers, who had insisted on seeing the red cover. A protective team positioned itself around the proposed exchange site.

At eleven forty, a new message changed everything: WRONG BOOK. WE WANT THE ONE EVELYN GAVE SOPHIE.

“Another book?” Adrian said.

I remembered Sophie's stuffed rabbit, Mr. Buttons, the toy she carried everywhere until this morning. Mrs. Bell found the rabbit on Sophie's bed, its fabric seam recently stitched with red thread. Inside the stuffing was a miniature notebook bound with the same red leather.

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The first page held one sentence in Evelyn's handwriting: Adrian, our daughter's birth certificate is not the only document Marcus forged.

Beneath it was a photograph of a newborn baby wearing a hospital bracelet with a different family name.