Chapter 15 - THE BOX AT THE DOOR
Police immediately moved us again.
The cardboard box changed the investigation because someone had managed to approach a protected location.
That meant Jason either had help nearby or access to information he should not have possessed.
Alvarez examined the photograph.
Sarah recognized the handwriting.
“It isn’t Jason’s.”
“Cole?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know his handwriting.”
Fingerprints from the box provided the answer.
Cole Mercer.
Cole had delivered the warning.
But why?
Alvarez believed the message might not have been a threat.
It might have been a warning.
Cole knew Jason’s habits.
Maybe he had discovered our location and wanted us moved before Jason arrived.
Police searched surrounding security cameras.
A dark sedan appeared near my street twenty minutes before the box was delivered.
Another camera captured the driver.
Cole.
Then a second vehicle followed him.
A blue pickup.
Rebecca Miller’s truck.
Jason had been close.
Very close.
Cole had apparently realized it and tried to warn us.
Suddenly his disappearance made sense.
He was not working with Jason again.
He was running from him.
And now he was trying to help investigators without exposing himself.
At 10:32 p.m., Alvarez’s phone rang.
Cole again.
This time officers successfully traced the call.
He was inside a bus station downtown.
Police surrounded the building.
Cole surrendered.
He told them everything.
Jason had contacted Rebecca after fleeing the motel.
Rebecca believed her brother was being falsely accused.
She agreed to help him.
Cole tried to convince her otherwise.
She refused.
Jason then learned Cole had spoken to police.
That was why Cole ran.
“Where is Jason now?”
Alvarez asked.
Cole gave him the answer.
“He wants the girl.”
When Alvarez told me later, I felt ice move through my chest.
“Emily?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Jason thinks she knows where Sarah stored copies of the evidence.”
“She doesn’t.”
“He may not believe that.”
I looked at Sarah.
She had hidden copies online.
Only investigators knew.
Jason assumed Emily had another physical copy.
Cole also revealed something else.
Jason had spent years avoiding prison by destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses.
Emily was the youngest person who had ever seen him panic.
She had heard his real name.
She had seen Cole.
She knew about the bags.
She had watched Sarah being moved.
Jason saw her as a witness.
Alvarez placed additional officers around our location.
Nobody slept.
At 4:15 a.m., a vehicle approached the roadblock.
It slowed.
Then turned around.
Police followed.
The vehicle accelerated.
Officers stopped it several miles away.
Rebecca Miller was driving.
Jason was not inside.
But Rebecca finally understood the truth when police showed her Sarah’s evidence.
She began cooperating.
And she gave investigators one location Jason might use when every other plan failed.
Their mother’s abandoned house outside Cedar Falls.
Jason had not visited it in twenty years.
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Nobody would think to look there.
Nobody except his sister.
