Chapter 6 - THE RIVER WAREHOUSE
Police did not allow me to go with them.
I hated that.
Every part of me wanted to be there when they searched the industrial district.
But Alvarez was firm.
“Stay with Emily.”
So I stayed.
For three hours, I watched my phone.
At 11:06 a.m., Alvarez called.
“We found the van.”
My pulse jumped.
“And Sarah?”
“Not yet.”
The van had been parked behind an abandoned warehouse beside the river.
Its plates were stolen.
Inside investigators found Sarah’s scarf, a water bottle, and a receipt from a gas station nearly sixty miles north.
That suggested she had been moved again.
“What about Jason?”
“No sign of him.”
“The other man?”
“We’re working on it.”
Federal investigators had identified him from security footage recovered near the warehouse.
His name was Cole Mercer.
He had known Jason under the name Daniel Cross for more than fifteen years.
Cole had a record involving fraud and stolen identities.
He was also currently missing.
I looked at Emily sitting on the living room floor.
She was drawing.
For the first time since I found her, her shoulders looked slightly less tense.
I did not tell her about the warehouse.
Not yet.
Then Alvarez said something surprising.
“We found another room inside the building.”
“What kind of room?”
“An office.”
“And?”
“Photographs.”
“Of Sarah?”
“Some.”
My stomach tightened.
“What else?”
“Other women.”
The names from Sarah’s notes suddenly returned to me.
The women who had disappeared.
“Were they victims?”
“We don’t know.”
Alvarez continued.
“But one photograph includes Jason.”
“What was he doing?”
“Standing beside them.”
“Where?”
“Different houses.”
The pattern was becoming clearer.
Jason did not simply steal identities.
He entered lives.
He became trusted.
Then he took control of finances.
When suspicion grew, he disappeared.
Sarah had discovered the pattern before he could finish whatever he had planned.
“What makes Sarah different?”
I asked.
Alvarez understood the question.
“Why didn’t he simply leave?”
“Yes.”
“The house.”
Sarah’s house had been inherited from her father.
It was worth nearly eight hundred thousand dollars.
Jason had apparently forged documents attempting to borrow against it.
Sarah had blocked the transaction.
Then she had contacted an attorney.
That was when Jason’s plan started collapsing.
“He needed the blue folder.”
Alvarez said.
“And when he couldn’t find it, he needed Sarah.”
“To force her to cooperate?”
“That’s our theory.”
I closed my eyes.
Sarah had been buying time.
She had hidden the evidence.
She had tried to send Emily to me.
And when Jason realized what she had done, he had trapped them both.
Before hanging up, Alvarez gave me one more detail.
The gas station receipt found in the van was from a town called Millbrook.
Emily heard the name.
She looked up from her drawing.
“Millbrook?”
I turned.
“You know it?”
She nodded slowly.
“Jason took us there once.”
“When?”
“Last summer.”
“Why?”
“He said we were visiting a friend.”
“What friend?”
Emily pointed toward her drawing.
I looked down.
May you like
She had drawn a small gray cabin beside a lake.
“He has a house there.”
