The Men Who Came During the Second Rain
Chapter 09 - The Men Who Came During the Second Rain
Warren Pike remained missing.
A second storm system approached the coast while emergency crews repaired the seed vault.
The federal court ordered all evidence moved to a university facility inland.
Convoys began before dawn.
One truck never arrived.
Its driver was found bound but unharmed near an abandoned service station. Pike had taken the vehicle carrying Thomas’s original engineering logs and the community seed collections marked red.
He contacted Margaret’s attorney and offered to return the truck in exchange for safe passage abroad.
Margaret publicly denied communicating with him.
Phone records showed her executive assistant had called Pike twelve times.
Isaac led the search.
Caleb wanted to help because Thomas’s notebooks contained a hand-drawn map he knew from home lessons. Lena refused to place him in an operation.
He gave Isaac the map and remained with Grace.
The truck’s tracker had been removed, but Thomas marked every Arden emergency warehouse with mechanical details. The stolen vehicle required a rare charging connector available at only three sites.
One was an abandoned storm-relief depot near the old river locks.
Police surrounded it.
Pike had wired the seed crates to an industrial furnace. He planned to destroy them if officers entered.
Isaac spoke through a loudspeaker.
“Those seeds are not evidence against only you. They belong to families who may never recover them.”
Pike laughed over the radio.
“Families sell anything when weather turns.”
He believed the world shared his logic.
Celia Voss, a warehouse engineer and former Arden employee, gave police access to the ventilation system. Officers released fire suppressant into the furnace chamber and disabled ignition.
Pike attempted to flee through the river lock.
He was arrested.
The crates survived.
During interrogation, Pike refused to implicate Margaret until prosecutors showed him a transfer canceling his escape fund.
Margaret had already sacrificed him.
He began talking.
He admitted causing Thomas’s silo explosion after Thomas copied safety logs. He admitted removing Caleb’s adoption page, monitoring Lena’s pregnancy, and entering Cedar Farm.
“Did Margaret order Lena’s death?” Isaac asked.
“She never used that word.”
“What did she say?”
“The storm must leave one Arden child, not two Reed problems.”
The sentence was recorded.
Pike had understood which child counted.
He had also understood that Lena counted only as a route to the baby.
May you like
Bloodline was not love inside the Arden family.
It was asset management.
