Search Pattern
Chapter 07 - Search Pattern
Daniel wanted to listen to the recording immediately.
The rescuer in him said no.
Victim first. Evidence second.
He checked Mia’s pupils with his phone light, felt her pulse, examined her wrist, and made her take slow breaths. Natalie removed her shawl and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders.
“How long were you here?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know. The song upstairs changed four times.”
Natalie looked at him. “Twenty minutes, maybe more.”
Mia pointed to an envelope near the wall. “Claire tried to take it. I threw it behind the pipe.”
Daniel retrieved it. His name was written across the front in block letters. The return address belonged to North Harbor Neurological Recovery Center in Maine.
The envelope had been opened.
Inside was a letter dated six months earlier.
Dear Mr. Cross, it began. We believe a patient admitted under unidentified status may be connected to the 2019 Blackwater rescue incident.
Daniel stopped reading.
The room tilted.
Blackwater was the flood where Emma disappeared.
No body had been recovered. Only her torn jacket and damaged helmet had been found downstream. After eighteen days, the official search had ended. Daniel had continued alone for another week until Owen convinced him he was destroying himself and frightening Mia.
He had built a grave with no body beneath it.
“Dad?” Mia said.
Daniel folded the letter with shaking hands.
Not now. He could not hope while his daughter still needed him.
He lifted her into his arms.
“I can walk,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you carrying me?”
“Because I need to.”
She accepted this with the solemn generosity children sometimes offer adults.
They climbed the basement stairs. At the top, Grant was gone. Claire and Evelyn had disappeared as well.
Natalie checked her phone. Signal returned in the main corridor. She dialed 911 and gave the address, then sent a message to a contact Daniel did not recognize.
“Who was that?”
“Detective Rosa Alvarez.”
“You know a detective?”
“I have hobbies.”
“You collect cold cases.”
“That is a hobby.”
Mia managed a weak laugh against Daniel’s shoulder.
As they approached the ballroom, the music stopped.
The double doors opened from the other side. Owen stood there, framed by chandeliers and staring guests.
His eyes went first to Mia.
Then to the recorder in her hand.
Daniel saw the calculation pass across his face.
Owen smiled.
“Thank God,” he said. “You found her.”
Daniel had known Owen for twenty-two years. He knew every version of his smile: courtroom confidence, private amusement, sympathy at funerals.
This smile was new.
It belonged to a man approaching an unexploded bomb.
Daniel carried Mia into the ballroom.
May you like
“Lock the doors,” he told Natalie.
Owen’s smile vanished.
