Chapter 11 - The Lesson in the Rain)
Kristin put the call on speaker.
Ethan was beside her, and Detective Park listened through a second phone. Georgia demanded that Kristin come to the parking lot of a closed grocery store at six the next evening. She was to bring Rachel's letter and the small steel key. If police appeared, Georgia would destroy the only record of Rachel's location.
"Let me speak to Rachel," Kristin said.
"You are in no position to demand anything."
"Then give me proof she's alive."
Georgia played three seconds of audio. A woman said, "Ethan, I never forgot the green bicycle."
The recording ended.
Ethan gripped the edge of the table. The green bicycle had never appeared in the newspaper or police file.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
Georgia ended the call.
Park urged caution. The voice could have come from an old recording, or Georgia might have told someone what to say. They would prepare surveillance at the grocery store, but Kristin would not attend. An officer with a similar build would sit in her car while tactical units watched every exit.
The next afternoon, the operation found nothing.
Georgia never appeared.
At 6:15, a prepaid phone taped beneath a shopping cart began to ring. Park answered it. A recorded message played.
"Ethan always did follow instructions when a uniform gave them. Kristin is less obedient. That is why she needs to be taught."
At the same moment, a transformer exploded three blocks from the Cole house.
The neighborhood lost power.
Ethan looked at Park. "She's at the house."
They drove through the first hard drops of rain. The storm had arrived faster than forecast, a black wall swallowing the western sky. Traffic lights failed along the main road, and cars clogged the intersections. By the time they reached Sun Valley, wind was bending tree branches across the street.
The house was empty.
The back door stood open. A dining chair lay on its side. Kristin's phone rested on the kitchen floor, its screen cracked.
Ethan shouted her name.
No answer came.
Park called for units, then saw a new message on her phone. Officers at the grocery store had detained the woman from Kristin's car. It was not an officer.
It was Kristin.
She had received a message twenty minutes before the operation began. The text appeared to come from Park and instructed her to switch places with the decoy because Georgia recognized the officer. Kristin had followed the instructions, surrendered her phone to the decoy as directed, and remained under surveillance the entire time.
The phone on the kitchen floor was a duplicate.
Georgia had wanted Ethan to believe Kristin had been taken.
"Why?" he said.
A crash sounded from the bedroom.
Park drew her weapon. They found the closet panel open and the steel plate Ethan had installed bent away from the wall. Someone had entered through the crawlspace and searched the cavity.
Rachel's original letter was gone.
The copy Kristin had taken to the operation was still with police.
On the bedroom mirror, Georgia had written a message in lipstick.
You chose wrong again.
Georgia had used the false meeting to empty the house, not to capture Kristin. The photograph, the threat, and the voice recording had been pieces of the same diversion.
Park sent officers to search the drainage path and neighboring yards. Rain erased tracks almost as soon as they formed.
At 7:03, Ethan received a call from his construction company's emergency dispatcher. Wind had torn loose sheeting from the upper floors of his active site. A guard had been injured, and the city needed a supervisor to approve closure of the street.
"I can't leave," he said.
Park took the phone and verified the incident through the city. It was real.
"Go," she told him. "Kristin is with officers, and we'll remain here."
Ethan hesitated until Park promised to escort Kristin back to the house only after the search was complete.
The storm intensified. At the construction site, metal panels struck the frame like enormous cymbals. Ethan helped firefighters establish a safe perimeter and checked the injured guard, who had a broken arm but remained conscious.
At 8:26, Park called.
"Georgia has been spotted near the river. We are moving units there. An officer will take Kristin to a hotel outside the search area."
"Let me speak to her."
"She's in another vehicle. I'll have her call."
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Kristin did not call.
At 8:51, Ethan contacted the emergency dispatcher and learned there was no order to take her to a hotel. Park's phone had been cloned. The call had been false.
He dialed the detective directly through police headquarters.
"Kristin left with an officer twenty-five minutes ago," the real Park said. "She told us you had requested it."
The man in uniform was not an officer.
Traffic had nearly stopped, so Ethan abandoned his truck two streets from the house and ran through the storm.
He did not know what had happened in the backyard eighteen minutes earlier.
The false officer had driven Kristin home in an unmarked sedan. As soon as she entered the kitchen, Georgia stepped from the dark pantry and pressed a cloth over her mouth. The chemical odor made Kristin dizzy, but she fought, knocking over the chair and tearing free before she lost consciousness.
The false officer never entered. He drove away as Georgia dragged Kristin toward the open back door.
"You could have been part of this family," Georgia said. "You could have let me help raise Ethan's child."
Kristin dug her heels into the wet porch boards. "You were never helping."
Georgia twisted her arm behind her back. "I gave up my daughter to save my son. Do you think I will let you take him from me now?"
She forced Kristin across the yard. Kristin's blue floral maternity dress snagged on the shed latch and tore. Georgia shoved her inside.
"Ethan will find me."
"He will find an empty room."
Georgia slammed the door and fastened the shiny brass padlock.
May you like
"Think about what your pride has done," she called through the rain. "Consider this a lesson."
Then she went into the house to search for the key, unaware that it was in Kristin's shoe.
