Chapter 3
Victor had known me for twenty-three years.
He had pulled me out of bar fights.
Sat beside my hospital bed after a motorcycle crash.
Carried my father’s coffin.
If Sarah’s warning had come from anyone else, I would have opened that door without hesitation.
Instead I stood perfectly still.
“Ray?”
Victor knocked again.
“I know you’re in there.”
Cole looked at me.
“What do we do?”
Emily was sitting only a few feet away.
I couldn’t gamble with her life.
I motioned for Boone to take her into the back office.
She resisted.
“I want to stay.”
“Emily.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“No.”
I crouched in front of her.
“But you’re the person they’re chasing, and that means I protect you first.”
Her eyes searched mine.
Something about that look hit me harder than I expected.
Maybe because Sarah had looked at me the same way years ago.
Finally Emily nodded.
Boone led her away.
I opened the door.
Victor stood outside alone.
He was sixty-eight now.
White hair.
Broad shoulders.
Same black leather vest I had seen half my life.
His eyes moved immediately past me.
“Where’s the girl?”
My pulse changed.
I hadn’t told him about Emily.
“How do you know there’s a girl?”
Victor paused.
Only a second.
But I saw it.
Then he sighed.
“People talk, Ray. Half the diner called somebody.”
“Who called you?”
“Cole.”
Cole stepped forward.
“No, I didn’t.”
Victor’s face hardened.
The room seemed to shrink.
He looked at Cole.
Then back at me.
“What is this?”
I held up the brass key.
For the first time in more than twenty years, I watched Victor Hale lose control of his expression.
His eyes widened.
Then immediately narrowed.
“Where did you get that?”
That was enough.
My chest felt hollow.
“You know exactly where.”
Victor walked inside and closed the door.
“Ray, listen to me.”
“Did you betray Sarah?”
His jaw tightened.
“It wasn’t what you think.”
A strange laugh escaped me.
I had spent fourteen years blaming myself.
Fourteen years waking from nightmares hearing Sarah scream behind a steel door.
And Victor knew.
“What do I think?”
He lowered his voice.
“That warehouse was supposed to be empty when you returned.”
Cole cursed.
I stared at Victor.
“So you did it.”
“No.”
“You gave them my location.”
“I gave them a schedule.”
“That is the same thing!”
My fist hit the wall beside him.
Victor didn’t move.
“I was trying to save the club.”
“By sacrificing us?”
“You were twenty-nine and stupid!”
“And Sarah?”
His face changed.
“She had information that could have gotten all of us killed.”
“She was pregnant.”
That hit him.
Victor stared at me.
“What?”
I shoved the photograph against his chest.
He looked down.
Sarah.
The baby.
His face went pale.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“You sent them after a pregnant woman without knowing.”
Victor lowered the photograph.
“Ray, the people behind Meridian weren’t smugglers. They had cops, judges, customs officers. They told me if Sarah talked, every Iron Saint would disappear.”
“So you gave her up.”
“I told them where the warehouse was.”
Emily’s voice came from behind us.
“My mom trusted you.”
Boone had failed to keep her in the office.
Victor turned.
Emily stood in the doorway.
Her face was wet with tears.
Victor seemed to age ten years.
“Kid—”
“Don’t call me that.”
She stepped forward.
“My mom told me there was one man in the club who made sure nobody could rescue her.”
Victor looked at me.
I felt sick.
“Was it you?”
He didn’t answer.
Emily did.
“She said his name was Victor.”
Cole swore.
Mateo turned away.
Victor closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Emily slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room.
Nobody stopped her.
Victor accepted it.
She hit his chest next.
“You took my mom!”
He caught her wrists gently.
“I didn’t know she survived.”
Emily struggled.
“Let go!”
I pulled her away.
Victor released her immediately.
Emily buried her face against me.
My arms closed around her.
That was the first time I realized how naturally I had started holding her.
Like my body understood something my mind hadn’t caught up to.
Victor watched us.
“Ray, there’s more.”
I looked at him over Emily’s head.
“There better be.”
“The men who took Sarah worked for Adrian Cross.”
Cole frowned.
“The developer?”
Everybody in Arizona knew Adrian Cross.
Real estate.
Private security.
Political donations.
His name was attached to hospitals, stadiums, charities.
Victor nodded.
“Before he became respectable, he ran Meridian’s operation.”
My stomach tightened.
“The man at the diner?”
“Grant Keller. Cross’s security chief.”
I remembered the expensive coat.
The cold smile.
Victor continued.
“If Sarah has evidence connecting Cross to Meridian, he will kill everyone between himself and that evidence.”
Emily pulled away from me.
“Mom has it.”
I looked down.
“What?”
“She told me she kept proof.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Victor looked at the key.
“Room 317.”
“No.”
I held it tighter.
“The warehouse is gone.”
Victor shook his head.
“The number didn’t refer only to that warehouse room.”
He sat at the table.
“Meridian numbered every secured storage location using the same internal code. Three-seventeen was a designation.”
“For what?”
“Witness material.”
Cole frowned.
“That makes no sense.”
Victor looked at me.
“It was their archive.”
My skin prickled.
“Where?”
“I never knew.”
Emily suddenly reached for the photograph.
“Wait.”
She turned it over.
The sentence was written across the back.
She never died.
But beneath the words, nearly invisible, were tiny dots.
Emily scratched one with her fingernail.
“Invisible ink?”
Cole grabbed a UV flashlight from the tool bench.
We killed the room lights.
He shined it across the photograph.
Numbers appeared beneath Sarah’s message.
33.4484.
-112.0740.
Coordinates.
Mateo entered them into his phone.
His eyebrows rose.
“Downtown Phoenix.”
“Where exactly?” I asked.
He turned the screen.
A building appeared.
The old Central Station.
Mostly abandoned.
Victor looked sick.
“I know that place.”
I stared at him.
“Of course you do.”
“Ray.”
“You’re not coming.”
“If Cross’s men are there—”
“You’re the reason they ever found Sarah.”
Victor accepted the words.
Then he reached inside his vest.
Cole reached for him.
Victor slowly removed a small metal tag.
Another number.
He put it beside my brass key.
“I’ve carried this fourteen years.”
My anger paused.
“What is it?”
“The second half.”
He looked directly at me.
“Sarah’s room was protected by two locks.”
My breathing stopped.
“I kept mine because I knew someday I might have to answer for what I did.”
Emily stared at him.
Victor pushed the tag toward me.
“Take it.”
I did.
Then a phone rang.
Not mine.
Emily’s backpack.
She went pale.
“I don’t have a phone.”
We all looked at the bag.
The ringing continued.
I opened the front pocket.
Inside was a phone none of us had seen before.
One incoming call.
UNKNOWN.
I answered.
A man’s voice spoke.
“Ray Mercer.”
I recognized Grant Keller immediately.
“We have Sarah.”
Emily covered her mouth.
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“If you hurt her—”
“She’s alive.”
A pause.
“For now.”
I heard something in the background.
A woman coughing.
Then her voice.
“Ray?”
My entire world stopped.
“Sarah.”
Emily began sobbing.
“Mom!”
Sarah heard her.
“Emily?”
Keller took the phone back.
“Bring key 317 to Central Station.”
“How do I know you’ll release her?”
“You don’t.”
He laughed quietly.
“And Ray?”
“What?”
“Come alone.”
The line went dead.
Victor looked at me.
“You know that’s a trap.”
I closed my fist around both pieces of 317.
“Yes.”
Then I looked at Emily.
“But Sarah waited fourteen years for me to come back.”
May you like
I stood.
“This time I’m not leaving her behind.”
