Chapter 5 - THE MAN IN THE FLOODED TRUCK
Natalie dragged Emily behind a concrete wall.
Marcus fired once toward the stairwell.
Someone shouted.
Helen pulled open a maintenance panel.
“There’s another way out.”
They crawled through a service tunnel no wider than a coffin.
Behind them, gunfire echoed.
The passage emerged beyond the camp’s old laundry building.
A vehicle waited under the trees.
Not police.
A battered green Jeep.
The driver’s door opened.
Andrew Parker stepped out.
Natalie almost did not recognize him.
Blood darkened the bandage around his shoulder.
Bruises covered the left side of his face.
He moved with a limp.
Emily broke free.
“Dad!”
Andrew fell to his knees as she reached him.
He held her so tightly that Natalie had to look away.
Then his eyes found her.
“Officer Brooks.”
Natalie drew her weapon.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Andrew slowly lifted one hand.
His other arm remained around Emily.
“Natalie,” Helen said, “he saved us.”
“I don’t know that.”
Andrew nodded.
“She’s right.”
He kissed Emily’s hair and stood.
“Take me in.”
Marcus emerged behind Natalie.
“Start with the truck.”
Andrew looked toward the distant road.
“I was going to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Why?”
“They said they had Rebecca’s original phone.”
The phone Rebecca had carried the night she died had never been recovered.
Andrew drove toward Mercer Bridge.
A vehicle followed.
He accelerated.
The storm worsened.
Near the flooded curve, another truck struck him from behind.
His pickup crashed through the barrier.
“I remember water coming through the windshield,” he said. “Then nothing.”
“How did you get out?”
“I don’t know.”
Natalie frowned.
“You don’t know?”
“I woke up on the riverbank.”
“With that shoulder wound?”
Andrew nodded.
“It’s not from the crash.”
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“What is it from?”
Andrew pulled down the edge of his torn shirt.
The injury was not jagged.
It was clean.
A puncture.
“Someone injected me.”
Helen examined it.
“Sedative.”
Andrew continued.
“When I woke up, my wallet and phone were gone. I walked until I found an old hunting shack. There was a radio. I heard Ashley had been found.”
His voice broke.
For the first time, Natalie saw the father beneath the suspect.
“I left her for thirty minutes.”
He covered his face.
“I told her thirty minutes.”
Natalie remembered Ashley repeating it.
Not accusing him.
Believing him.
“Why leave her alone at all?”
“Because I thought the house was safer than taking her into the storm.”
“You had Emily there too.”
“Yes.”
“Then where was she?”
“With Helen.”
Andrew looked at Emily.
“I called Helen before I left.”
“So the little girl Ashley saw before you left was Emily?”
“Yes.”
Natalie lowered her weapon slightly.
“Why two identical backpacks?”
Andrew looked confused.
“What?”
“The backpack found in your truck matches Ashley’s.”
“That wasn’t mine.”
Natalie and Marcus exchanged a glance.
“Someone planted it,” Andrew said.
“What was supposed to be in your truck?”
“Nothing except emergency gear.”
Natalie thought of the taped envelope addressed to her.
“You didn’t put an envelope in the backpack?”
Andrew stared.
“No.”
“Did you write ‘If I don’t return’ on it?”
“No.”
Silence.
Someone else had known Andrew would crash.
Someone else had known Natalie would respond.
And someone else had prepared evidence before the storm.
“Who knew you trusted me?” Natalie asked.
Andrew hesitated.
“Rebecca.”
“She’s dead.”
“She wrote about you.”
“In what?”
“A journal.”
“Where is it?”
Andrew shook his head.
“Missing.”
Everything seemed to return to Rebecca.
The crash.
The Ledger.
The altered records.
Natalie’s own forgotten report.
Andrew suddenly looked toward the trees.
“We need to move.”
“Why?”
“Those men at the camp weren’t trying to kill Helen.”
“What were they doing?”
“Taking Emily.”
Natalie looked at the girl.
“Why now?”
May you like
Andrew’s face darkened.
“Because whoever built Hawthorne is still collecting children.”
