Chapter 2 - The Scar Beneath the Cuff
Austin drew his gun before the door opened.
Bruno moved Jacey behind the marble column.
“Stay with Rosa.”
“No,” Jacey whispered.
The office door opened three inches.
Then stopped.
Austin approached from the side.
“Come out.”
Nothing.
He pushed the door open.
Empty.
The office windows were locked.
His desk was untouched.
But a phone was ringing inside the bottom drawer.
Austin opened it.
An unfamiliar phone lay beside his mother's old Bible.
The screen displayed:
ELENA REED.
Austin answered.
“Elena?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
A woman's breathing.
“Elena?”
A distorted voice whispered, “You should have kept your promise.”
The call ended.
Austin stared at the screen.
Bruno entered.
“How did that get in here?”
“That is a better question than who called it.”
Austin looked toward the office door.
The lock showed no damage.
Someone with access had placed the phone there.
Marcus.
Or someone who wanted Austin to believe it was Marcus.
Jacey appeared behind Bruno.
Austin frowned. “I told you to stay with Rosa.”
“She went to get me shoes.”
Jacey looked at the phone.
Her expression changed.
“I've seen that.”
“Where?”
“Mom had one like it.”
Austin crouched.
“Think carefully.”
“She kept it inside the wall.”
“What wall?”
“Our apartment.”
Austin glanced at Bruno.
Witness protection homes sometimes contained emergency caches.
“What did she use it for?”
“I don't know. She told me never to touch it.”
Jacey stared at the phone again.
“But it had the same sticker.”
Austin turned it over.
A tiny silver star was stuck beside the battery cover.
Childish.
Faded.
“Did you put this there?”
Jacey nodded.
“When I was little.”
That meant this was Elena's phone.
Someone had taken it from her apartment and brought it into Austin's mansion.
The message was unmistakable.
They could reach Elena.
They could reach Austin.
And they had already entered his home.
Austin stood.
“Bruno, pull every security recording from the last seventy-two hours.”
“Already doing it.”
“Nobody leaves.”
“What about Marcus?”
“Especially Marcus.”
They found him twelve minutes later.
In the garage.
He was standing beside an SUV with a pistol in one hand.
Two guards had their weapons trained on him.
Austin approached.
Marcus slowly placed his gun on the hood.
“This looks bad,” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
“I heard something in the garage.”
“So you came alone?”
“I couldn't find you.”
Austin looked at the vehicle.
Its rear door was open.
Inside lay a wet black coat.
A pair of gloves.
And a photograph.
Austin picked it up.
Elena and Jacey.
Taken through a window.
Three days earlier.
Marcus stared at it.
“That isn't mine.”
Austin almost smiled.
“You're standing beside your car.”
“Someone put it there.”
“Convenient.”
“You know me.”
“I thought I did.”
Marcus's expression changed.
“Austin, if I had taken Elena, Jacey would never have reached this house.”
Bruno stepped forward angrily.
Austin raised one hand.
Marcus continued.
“Whoever is doing this wants you looking at me.”
“You have the scar.”
“So do thousands of men.”
“Jacey recognized you.”
“No. She recognized a scar.”
Austin said nothing.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Ask her which wrist.”
Austin's eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Ask her.”
They returned to the foyer.
Jacey sat wrapped in Austin's coat.
Austin knelt.
“The scar you saw. Which arm?”
She pointed.
“Left.”
Marcus slowly rolled up his sleeves.
A white scar ran across his right wrist.
Austin stared.
Jacey stared too.
“No.”
She looked confused.
“It was on this side.”
She touched her left wrist again.
Marcus's scar was on the opposite arm.
Someone had wanted Jacey's description to implicate him.
Or someone with an almost identical scar had been at Elena's apartment.
Austin stood.
Marcus looked at him.
“Now do you believe me?”
“I believe one thing.”
“What?”
“Somebody knows us very well.”
Bruno arrived carrying a laptop.
“We found something.”
He placed it on the table.
Security footage appeared.
2:13 a.m.
The previous night.
A hooded figure crossed Austin's private corridor.
The face remained hidden.
The person stopped outside his office.
Produced a key.
Entered.
Forty seconds later, the figure left.
“Zoom.”
Bruno did.
The image pixelated.
But something became visible around the person's wrist.
A watch.
Austin knew it.
He had given that watch as a Christmas gift.
To Nathan Pierce.
Austin looked toward the staircase.
Nathan was gone.
“Find Pierce.”
Guards spread through the mansion.
A minute later, a shout came from the kitchen.
Austin ran.
The back door stood open.
Nathan was nowhere in sight.
On the counter lay another envelope.
Austin opened it.
One sentence.
THE GIRL HAS WHAT BELONGS TO US.
Austin turned toward Jacey.
“What exactly did your mother put in that backpack?”
Jacey's face tightened.
“I don't know.”
“Jacey.”
“She told me not to tell anyone.”
“I'm not anyone.”
The girl looked at him for several seconds.
Then reached beneath the collar of her dress.
A thin chain appeared.
Something small hung from it.
A key.
“My mom said the backpack was supposed to be stolen.”
Austin stared.
“She wanted them to take it?”
Jacey nodded.
“She said the real thing was somewhere they wouldn't look.”
“Where?”
Jacey lifted the key.
“She said you would know.”
Austin took it.
Stamped into the metal were three numbers.
The same three numbers written on Elena's envelope.
Austin knew exactly what they meant.
Vermont.
The old safe house.
Room 317 didn't exist.
But locker 317 did.
And six years ago, Austin had hidden something inside it that no federal agent had ever known about.
Before he could speak, Bruno's phone vibrated.
He read the message.
His face changed.
“What?”
Bruno turned the screen toward Austin.
A photograph had arrived from Nathan's number.
Elena was tied to a chair.
Alive.
A newspaper dated that morning rested against her chest.
Beneath the photograph were five words.
BRING THE GIRL TO THE HARBOR.
Then another message appeared.
This one contained only a name.
Austin read it twice.
May you like
The name belonged to the man who had ordered his father's murder twenty years earlier.
And according to Austin, that man had been dead for twelve years.
