Chapter 9
Price read the message twice, then lowered Vanessa’s phone to the table.
“No one is going alone,” he said.
“I know what it says,” Vanessa replied.
“I’m not talking about the message.”
Her eyes flicked to me. The phone rested between us, its screen gone dark. Beyond the café windows, rain blurred the streetlights into long, watery smears.
“You want to answer him,” Price said. “We decide what happens next. Together.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened. “If he thinks I’m coming with the phone, he might show.”
“And if he thinks you’re walking into a setup?” I asked.
“He’ll still come,” she said. “He wants that phone badly enough to threaten Ruby.”
The words landed between us. Vanessa closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“I helped Eric make calls. I let him use me because I wanted to believe he was only trying to save himself from debt. I won’t help him hide now.”
Price studied her, weighing the fear in her face against the resolve. “We can arrange a controlled meeting. You follow my instructions, and you don’t get out of sight of the officers.”
Vanessa nodded once.
Price stepped away to make calls. I leaned toward her, keeping my voice low.
“You don’t have to prove you’re sorry by putting yourself in danger.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything.” She swallowed. “I’m trying to stop making the choices that made this possible.”
I wanted to tell her that wasn’t the same as forgiveness. I also knew she hadn’t asked for it.
My phone buzzed. Tasha: Ruby’s settled. She’s drawing.
I pictured the blue sketchbook open on some unfamiliar table, my daughter’s small hand moving across the page. The image steadied me—but only a little.
Price returned with a plan. Vanessa would message Cal through the old account, claiming she had the phone and was ready to hand it over. Cal would choose the place. Price’s people would be nearby, out of sight.
“The real phone stays with me,” he said. “No one gets it unless I say so.”
Vanessa typed. Her fingers trembled once, then steadied.
I have the phone. I want to talk before I hand it over.
The answer came less than a minute later.
Cal named a closed contractor yard on the edge of the suburb and told her to come alone.
“He expects you to obey,” I said.
“He’s expecting someone to be scared,” Vanessa answered. “He might get that.”
Price arranged for us to leave separately. I was to stay with him, where he could keep me away from the yard and close enough to see what happened. I hated being told to stay back. I hated more that he was right.
The contractor yard had a chain-link fence and a squat office with its lights off. Rain ticked against the windshield as we parked a block away. Across the road, a second vehicle sat in shadow. Price gave the smallest nod toward it.
Vanessa walked toward the gate alone.
I watched her through the windshield, every step shrinking the space between her and the man who had helped Eric endanger my family. She kept her shoulders level. When Cal emerged from between two parked work trucks, she stopped.
“You brought it?” he asked.
“Not until I know what you did.”
Cal glanced toward the road, then back at her. “You said you wanted to talk.”
“I did.”
He looked thinner than I remembered from the café, or maybe fear had stripped away the confidence I’d seen there. His work jacket was damp at the shoulders. He rubbed his hands together, though the night wasn’t cold enough to explain it.
“I thought the house would be empty,” he said. “That’s what Eric told me. You and Ruby would be gone.”
The words made my fingers dig into my palm.
“You knew she had a daughter,” Vanessa said.
“I knew there was a kid. I didn’t think she’d be there.” He looked down. “I know how that sounds.”
“Like you want the danger to count less because you didn’t expect us to survive it,” I called from the car before I could stop myself.
Cal turned toward my voice. Price stepped out beside me, his badge visible in his hand.
Cal’s face went slack.
“You said alone,” he snapped at Vanessa.
“You said you wanted the phone,” she replied. “You didn’t ask me to trust you.”
Price moved closer, but not fast enough to make Cal feel trapped. “Tell me what Eric paid you to do.”
Cal looked at Vanessa. Something like shame passed over his face, quickly buried.
“He paid me to tamper with the heating system,” he said. “Told me how to make the failure look accidental. I didn’t think anybody would be in the house.”
“But you knew we lived there,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
The silence was worse than an excuse.
“Eric said he had the real policy papers,” Cal continued. “He said everything was covered. He was going to get the phone, wipe it, and leave town. That’s what he told me.”
“Where is he now?” Price asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been helping him run.”
Cal’s eyes darted toward the gate. “I was trying to get paid and get out. He said he’d have the cash tonight.”
“And the workshop?” Price asked.
Cal’s hand twitched toward his jacket pocket. “There’s nothing there.”
Vanessa stared at him. “Then why are you afraid to let us look?”
His phone rang.
Cal flinched so hard it seemed to jerk him backward. He checked the screen. Even from where I stood, I saw his face change.
“Don’t answer it,” Price said.
Cal did anyway.
“Yeah?” he said.
I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, only the hard, tinny sound of it. Cal’s gaze fixed on Vanessa.
“She doesn’t have it,” he said. “No, I didn’t—”
He listened. His skin had gone gray beneath the yard lights.
“Eric,” Vanessa said. “Tell him you’re done.”
Cal lowered the phone.
For one heartbeat, none of us moved. Then he bolted between the trucks.
Price and the officers rushed after him. I stayed beside Vanessa, watching the dark gaps where Cal had disappeared. Something metal clattered on the wet pavement near her shoe.
She bent and picked it up: a single key, its brass teeth dark with grease.
“He dropped it,” she said.
Price returned moments later, breathing hard. Cal was gone. He looked at the key in Vanessa’s palm and asked where Cal’s workshop was.
She told him.
We drove there under escort, rain streaking the windshield. The workshop stood behind a row of unlit garages, its roll-up door shut tight. Price’s radio crackled as another officer checked the surrounding lane.
Then Price’s flashlight swept across a car parked beside the building.
Eric’s car.
The engine was still warm.
May you like
Price looked toward the workshop, then into the rain-dark street beyond it.
Eric was gone.
