Chapter 8
Sergeant Price kept his voice low, but the muscles in his jaw tightened as he read the message on Vanessa’s phone.
“Don’t answer him,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to.” Vanessa’s fingers hovered over the screen. “I’m trying to see how he sent it.”
She tapped a small information icon. Beneath Eric’s name, an old account identifier appeared—one Vanessa recognized.
“I helped him set this up when he got a tablet,” she said. “He wanted his messages on more than one device.”
“Does that mean he can see where you are?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She stared at the screen, angry now, not just frightened. “I thought we disconnected it years ago.”
Price wrote down the account name. He didn’t tell us what it meant. That silence unsettled me more than a guess would have.
My phone rang. Tasha’s name flashed across it, and I answered before the first full ring.
“I’m with Ruby at school,” she said. Her voice was brisk, but I could hear a door close behind her. “We’re changing the plan. We’ll leave before dismissal and go where Price arranged.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s waiting with me. She knows we’re doing something different.”
The relief that came wasn’t clean. It had sharp edges: Eric had turned an ordinary afternoon into something Ruby had to be escorted through.
“Can I talk to her?”
A rustle, then Ruby’s small, careful voice. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Tasha’s taking you somewhere safer for a while. You don’t have to figure out where we go next. I have the grown-up part.”
A pause. I imagined her looking at the school-office door, waiting to be told what happened to her own day.
“Can I bring my sketchbook?”
The question caught me off guard. “Yes. Do you want the blue one or the red one?”
“The blue one. It has our house in it.”
My throat tightened. “Then the blue one comes with you.”
When we hung up, I kept my hand around the phone. Ruby had chosen one small thing that belonged to her—not the route, not the danger, not what her father had done. Just what she wanted beside her.
Vanessa watched me. Her eyes were shining, but she didn’t reach for my hand or ask me to make her feel better.
“I helped him set up the account,” she said. “I thought I was making things easier for him.”
“Then help us make things safer now.”
She nodded once. It wasn’t forgiveness. It was a job she could do.
A buzz rattled her phone against the tabletop.
Vanessa flinched. Price leaned in as she turned the screen toward him. A photograph filled it: our house, gray beneath the afternoon sky, with a fire department vehicle and a patrol car visible near the curb.
The message beneath it read: Still think they can keep everyone out?
For a beat, the café blurred—the fogged windows, the clatter of plates, the smell of burnt coffee. Whoever had taken the picture knew responders were there. He’d been close enough to see them.
Price enlarged the image. “Don’t delete anything.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Vanessa said, though her voice had gone thin.
He studied the front window of the house in the photograph. In its dark reflection, a pale shape sat across the street: a work van, its side panel marked with a red oval logo.
Vanessa leaned closer. “That’s Cal’s. He used it when he came to look at the furnace.”
Price was already reaching for his phone. “How long ago was this taken?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just came in.”
He called the unit at the house and described what he saw. I could hear only his side of the exchange, clipped and quick, while the rest of the café carried on around us as if no one’s family was being hunted.
“White service van,” he said. “Check the east side street. Same logo as the contractor vehicle.”
He listened, then stood so fast his chair scraped backward.
“I’m going to meet them.”
My hand closed around the strap of my purse. “And Ruby?”
“Tasha has her. Stay with Vanessa. Don’t go outside.” He was already moving toward the door. “I’ll call.”
The bell above the entrance jingled as he left.
Vanessa and I sat opposite each other. Her phone lay between us, the photograph still glowing on its screen. I couldn’t stop looking at the tiny reflected van. Someone had stood on our street and watched the people trying to keep us safe.
“He knew they’d be there,” Vanessa whispered.
“He wanted you to know he knew.”
She looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry.”
“I believe you’re sorry,” I said. “I don’t know yet what that changes.”
Her face tightened, but she nodded. This time she didn’t ask me to believe anything more.
My phone buzzed with a message from Tasha: Ruby has her sketchbook. We’re on our way.
I read it twice, holding on to the simple fact of those blue pages traveling with my daughter. Then Price’s call came through. I put him on speaker.
“The van was on the east street,” he said. Wind hissed across the connection. “The officers moved in, and the driver took off before they could box him in.”
A horn blared through the phone. Price swore under his breath.
“Did you get the plate?” I asked.
“Partial. They’re following.” His voice grew faint, as if he’d turned away. “No—he’s turning north. Cal’s van is moving.”
The call ended.
Vanessa’s phone lit again.
Price came back through the café door moments later, breathing hard. He saw the new notification and crossed to our table. Vanessa picked up the phone but didn’t open the message.
“Let me see,” he said.
She tilted the screen toward him.
Price read it, and his expression changed.
“What does it say?” I asked.
May you like
He turned the phone so we could read it ourselves.
Come alone. Bring the phone. Don’t tell anyone.
