Chapter 15 - The Empty Safehouse
Adrian called immediately.
No answer.
He drove faster than he ever had in his life.
Thomas followed in another car.
When they reached the safehouse, the door stood open.
Grace was gone.
Emma was gone.
Lily was gone.
The yellow blanket from Lily’s crib lay on the floor.
Adrian picked it up.
His hands began shaking.
Thomas checked every room.
“No bodies.”
Adrian said nothing.
“That matters.”
Adrian looked at him.
“They have my daughter.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I DO.”
Thomas stopped.
Adrian had rarely shouted in fifteen years of leading men.
Now the sound seemed to tear through the house.
He struck the wall once.
Then again.
Thomas grabbed his wrist.
“This is what Marcus wants.”
Adrian turned.
“He wants you angry.”
“He wants you stupid.”
“He wants the old Adrian Vale.”
Adrian stared at him.
Thomas lowered his voice.
“Evelyn left instructions because she knew this moment would come.”
Adrian breathed heavily.
Then he looked down.
Something lay beneath the crib.
Emma’s gray rabbit.
One ear had been folded backward.
Adrian picked it up.
Inside the ear was a tiny piece of paper.
A child’s handwriting covered it.
MOM SAID LILY IS NOT WITH US.
Adrian stopped breathing.
Thomas read it.
Then smiled.
Grace had anticipated the attack.
She had separated Lily from herself and Emma.
“They don’t have her.”
Adrian whispered.
“Where is she?”
Another note was hidden inside the rabbit.
Emma had drawn three flowers.
A church.
And a woman wearing glasses.
Adrian stared at the picture.
Then he remembered.
Evelyn’s younger sister Rachel had become a nun two years earlier.
She lived at St. Catherine’s convent in Wisconsin.
Grace had met her once.
Marcus never had.
Lily was safe.
But Grace and Emma were prisoners.
Adrian closed his hand around the rabbit.
Then Thomas noticed writing beneath one of the flowers.
Three numbers.
417.
Adrian recognized them.
Evelyn’s birthday.
April seventeenth.
The code to her old private art storage vault.
May you like
A clue from a dead woman.
One Adrian had overlooked for eight months.
