Chapter 11
I deleted the message before anyone could see it.
Then I hated myself for doing exactly what Thomas wanted.
But Mom was alive.
I couldn’t risk losing her again.
The address belonged to an abandoned farmhouse an hour south of Dallas.
Thomas ordered me to arrive before dawn.
He warned that police were monitoring Dad’s phone.
He said he would know if I told anyone.
I waited until Rebecca took Noah upstairs.
Dad was speaking with Ruiz in the kitchen.
I slipped into the guest room, opened Rebecca’s safe, and removed the blue box.
The front door alarm chimed as I left.
I ran.
Rebecca caught me at the driveway.
“Where are you going?”
I tried to lie.
She looked at the box.
“Thomas contacted you.”
“If I don’t go, he’ll kill Mom.”
“If you go alone, he’ll kill both of you.”
Dad appeared behind her.
His wounded shoulder was strapped against his chest.
“Show me the message.”
I did.
He read it twice.
Then he called Ruiz.
Thomas sent another photograph immediately.
A clock was visible beside Mom.
Forty-seven minutes remained.
Ruiz wanted to place a tracking device in the box.
I shook my head.
“He’ll check it.”
Dad removed the original documents and replaced them with copies.
Rebecca hid a transmitter inside the box’s metal hinge.
It was no larger than a grain of rice.
“You are not walking in alone,” Dad said.
“That’s what he demanded.”
“He expects us to follow. We’ll stay far enough back.”
Noah came downstairs while we were preparing.
He saw the photograph.
“That’s really Mom?”
Dad knelt.
“Yes.”
“I want to come.”
“No.”
“She might not remember me.”
Dad pulled him close.
“She remembers you.”
Ruiz drove me to a road near the farmhouse.
I continued in Rebecca’s SUV while officers followed without lights.
The farmhouse stood beyond a dead cornfield.
Thomas waited on the porch.
Grant Hale held a rifle beside him.
“Get out,” Thomas ordered.
I carried the box toward them.
“Where’s my mother?”
Thomas pointed inside.
Mom sat tied to a kitchen chair.
Her hair was shorter.
A scar crossed her cheek.
But when she saw me, she made the same sound she used to make when I woke from nightmares.
“My baby.”
I dropped the box and ran to her.
Thomas grabbed my hair.
“Open it.”
“Let her go first.”
He struck me across the face.
Mom screamed.
Hale opened the box.
He searched beneath the papers.
“The recordings aren’t here.”
“They’re copies,” I said. “The police have everything.”
Thomas smiled.
“Then you’re no longer useful.”
A gunshot sounded outside.
Hale moved toward the window.
Ruiz shouted through a loudspeaker.
“Release the hostages.”
Thomas looked at me with cold fury.
“You brought them.”
He pulled a gun.
Mom threw herself sideways, knocking the chair into him.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
I grabbed it from the floor.
Hale aimed his rifle at me.
Dad burst through the back door and tackled him.
They crashed against the table.
Dad cried out as his shoulder reopened.
Thomas seized Mom and dragged her toward a cellar door.
I aimed the gun.
“Let her go.”
“You won’t shoot your uncle.”
“No,” Mom said. “But I will.”
She drove the broken leg of the chair into Thomas’s knee.
He fell.
Ruiz rushed inside and handcuffed him.
Hale escaped through a window.
Dad crawled toward Mom.
They stared at each other for the first time in five years.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered.
Mom touched his face.
“I thought you chose them.”
May you like
Before Dad could answer, flames rose from the cellar.
Hale had set the farmhouse on fire.
