Chapter 4: The Backpack
Laura backed away from the wall.
“Why is my name here?”
Eli swallowed. “Because my mother knew you.”
“I don’t know your mother.”
“You did before the accident.”
Laura froze.
The accident.
Three years earlier, a truck had hit the car she was in with her husband. He died before help arrived. Laura survived, but pieces of her memory did not. Doctors told her trauma could do that. Some things returned in flashes. Some never came back.
She remembered her husband’s laugh. She remembered Sophie’s first birthday. She remembered hospital lights.
But there were blank spaces too.
Eli carefully set the backpack on a wooden crate.
“My mother’s name was Mara Vale,” he said. “She was a journalist.”
Laura felt a strange pressure behind her eyes.
Mara.
The name felt familiar, like a song heard long ago through a wall.
“She investigated Victor Kane,” Eli continued. “She said he owned judges, police captains, construction companies, even people at City Hall. She had proof, but no one would publish it. Everyone was afraid.”
Laura sat slowly on the edge of another crate.
“What does this have to do with me?”
Eli opened the front pocket of the backpack and removed a folded piece of paper.
“My mother said if anything happened to her, I had to find you.”
“What happened to her?”
His face tightened.
“She disappeared last week.”
Sophie stopped crying and looked at him with wide eyes.
Laura’s chest ached. “I’m sorry.”
Eli nodded, but he did not cry. He looked like he had used up all his tears before he ever reached the bus.
He unfolded the paper and handed it to Laura.
It was a letter.
The handwriting was rushed.
Laura, if this reaches you, Mara is gone or being silenced. You helped us once. You found the connection between Kane, the shelter fire, and the missing children’s fund. You hid the final copy because you knew Kane would come after us. The accident took your memory, but not the truth. Eli has the key. Protect him. Finish what we started. — M
Laura read it twice.
Then a third time.
Her hands went cold.
“This is impossible.”
Eli opened the backpack wider. Inside were documents, a black drive, old photographs, and a small notebook with water-damaged pages.
“My mother said the backpack was insurance,” he said. “But there’s one thing missing.”
“What?”
“The password.”
Laura almost laughed from panic. “You came to me for a password I don’t remember?”
Eli nodded.
“My mother said only you would know it.”
Outside, a car slowed near the alley.
The room fell silent.
A beam of light swept across the tiny basement window.
Laura grabbed Sophie and pulled her close.
Eli zipped the backpack.
May you like
The men had not given up.
And now Laura knew why.
