Chapter 1 - The Man Who Turned Around
I tightened my arms around my baby brother and whispered, “Noah, I think she left us.”
Three gates away, Chicago crime boss Adrian Vale stopped beside a black leather briefcase carried by one of his guards.
A white airline baggage tag was stuck beneath its handle.
Someone had written two words across the back:
MERCER CHILDREN.
Adrian realized this was not an accident.
I was nine years old when I learned that adults could tell you to stay put and use your obedience against you.
Until that afternoon, I had believed being good meant doing exactly what I was told.
Vanessa had spent years reminding me of that.
“Good girls don’t argue.”
“Good girls don’t embarrass their parents.”
“Good girls listen the first time.”
So when she bent down in front of me at Gate C22, straightened the hood of my charcoal sweatshirt, and said, “Don’t move, sweetheart. I’ll be right back,” I believed her.
Noah was heavy on my lap.
He was fourteen months old, though Vanessa often complained that he behaved like a younger baby because he still wanted his pacifier whenever he was tired. His soft brown hair stuck up around his ears. One small sneaker kept slipping off his heel.
Our mustard-yellow backpack sat beside me.
Everything we owned for the trip was inside it.
Two diapers.
A half-empty packet of wipes.
One bottle.
My sweater.
Noah’s stuffed rabbit.
And a plastic sandwich bag containing thirty-four dollars that I had saved from birthday cards.
Vanessa had taken everything else.
At first, I watched the boarding door because I expected her to come back through it.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
People moved around us with rolling suitcases and coffee cups. Announcements came over the speakers. A woman in a red coat hurried by while talking into her phone. A father dragged a sleepy little boy toward another gate.
Nobody looked at us for more than a second.
I kept telling myself Vanessa was in the restroom.
Then I told myself she had gone to ask an airline worker something.
Then I told myself there had been a mistake.
Children are very good at making excuses for adults they depend on.
The screen above the gate finally changed.
DEPARTED.
I stared at the word.
I knew what it meant.
I just didn’t want it to mean what I thought it meant.
“Vanessa?”
My voice barely came out.
Noah shifted against me.
I stood, balancing him awkwardly against my hip.
“Vanessa?”
A gate agent was gathering papers behind the desk.
I approached her.
“Excuse me?”
She looked down.
“Hi there.”
“My stepmom went on that plane.”
The woman smiled automatically. “Okay.”
“She told me to wait.”
The smile disappeared.
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“And this is your brother?”
I nodded.
“Where is your father?”
My stomach tightened.
“I don’t know.”
That was technically true.
My father, Daniel Mercer, had disappeared eleven months earlier.
Vanessa said he had run away.
She said he was tired of being a father.
I had never believed that.
Dad had been imperfect. He forgot appointments. He burned pancakes. He sometimes worked until midnight.
But he had never forgotten to kiss Noah’s forehead before bed.
He had never left the house without telling me when he would return.
And he had never called me a burden.
The gate agent reached for a phone.
That was when five men passed behind me.
I noticed them because everyone else noticed them.
The first man wore a black suit with an open collar and no tie. He was tall, maybe in his thirties, with dark hair swept back from his face. Tattoos climbed one side of his neck and disappeared beneath his shirt.
Four men followed him.
Black suits.
Dark glasses.
Straight backs.
Nobody bumped into them.
Nobody asked them to move.
People simply moved first.
I didn’t know who he was.
But Chicago did.
Adrian Vale.
I would learn later that his name appeared in newspapers without ever appearing beside a conviction. Nightclub owners knew him. Contractors knew him. Politicians denied knowing him.
Police had questioned him more times than anyone could count.
Nobody had ever made anything stick.
He had inherited an organization from his father and transformed it into something quieter, richer, and harder to touch.
At nine years old, none of that meant anything to me.
I only knew he looked like someone Vanessa would have warned me never to speak to.
Adrian walked past.
I looked down immediately.
The gate agent said, “Stay right here, okay? I’m going to contact airport police.”
My heart began pounding.
“No.”
She paused.
“What?”
“No police.”
“Sweetheart, you’re not in trouble.”
Vanessa had told me something before we left the apartment that morning.
If police ever ask about your father, you say you don’t know anything.
Never give them your backpack.
Never tell them where Daniel worked.
If you make trouble, they’ll take Noah away from you.
I believed her because I was nine.
I hugged Noah harder.
“Please don’t take him.”
The gate agent’s expression softened.
“Nobody is taking your brother.”
Behind her, Adrian Vale had reached the next concourse.
One of his bodyguards carried a slim black briefcase.
Adrian glanced at it.
Then stopped.
The bodyguard almost walked into him.
“What is it?” the man asked.
Adrian didn’t answer.
There was a white strip of paper stuck beneath the handle.
He pulled it free.
It looked like an airline baggage tag.
There was printing on the front.
C22.
MERCER.
Two passengers.
One adult.
One infant.
But on the back, written with a blue pen, were two words.
MERCER CHILDREN.
Adrian looked over his shoulder.
At me.
I didn’t know any of this yet.
All I saw was the frightening man suddenly standing still.
Then turning around.
The four men behind him stopped too.
The gate agent noticed.
Her face changed.
She knew him.
“Sir,” she said when he returned.
Adrian ignored her.
He stopped several feet away from me.
I pulled Noah closer.
He looked at the empty boarding lane.
Then the DEPARTED screen.
Then at the backpack.
Finally, his eyes settled on me.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Stepmom.”
“Where is she?”
I pointed toward the jet bridge.
“She went on the plane.”
His jaw tightened.
“She left you here?”
“She said she’d come back.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know.”
The gate agent answered.
“The flight pushed back twenty-six minutes ago.”
One of Adrian’s men muttered something under his breath.
Adrian crouched.
It was strange seeing someone so intimidating make himself smaller.
“What’s your name?”
“Elsie.”
“And him?”
“Noah.”
“Last name?”
“Mercer.”
Something moved behind his eyes.
Not recognition exactly.
More like confirmation.
He held up the baggage tag.
“Have you seen this?”
I shook my head.
He showed me the printed side.
My last name was there.
My brother’s initials.
The flight number.
Then he turned it over.
MERCER CHILDREN.
“Who wrote that?” I asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Did Vanessa give anyone your luggage?”
“No.”
“Did she talk to anyone before boarding?”
I thought.
Then remembered.
A man near the coffee kiosk.
Gray coat.
Baseball cap.
Vanessa had argued with him quietly.
I couldn’t hear everything.
But I had heard my father’s name.
Daniel.
“I saw her talking to someone.”
Adrian became very still.
“What did he look like?”
I described him.
One of the bodyguards immediately took out a phone.
Adrian said, “Find him.”
The man walked away.
The gate agent cleared her throat.
“Mr. Vale, airport police are already being contacted.”
“No.”
She blinked.
“No?”
Adrian looked toward a security camera above the gate.
“Not yet.”
“You don’t have authority—”
“There may be a reason these children were abandoned here.”
“And what reason would justify—”
“I didn’t say justify.”
His voice remained quiet.
That somehow made everyone listen harder.
“I said explain.”
He looked back at me.
“Elsie, is your father Daniel Mercer?”
My entire body went cold.
“How do you know my dad?”
Adrian’s face changed.
It was the first time I saw something that looked like genuine shock.
He stood slowly.
One of his bodyguards came closer.
“Boss?”
Adrian kept staring at me.
“Daniel Mercer worked for my company.”
I shook my head.
“No. My dad fixed computers.”
“He did.”
“He worked downtown.”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t…” I looked at the guards. “He wasn’t like you.”
Adrian almost smiled.
“No. He wasn’t.”
“Vanessa says he ran away.”
The almost-smile disappeared.
“When?”
“Eleven months ago.”
Adrian looked at his men.
Nobody spoke.
Then he asked me something I had not heard any adult ask since Dad vanished.
“Do you believe her?”
I shook my head so fast my ponytail moved.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad left something for me.”
Adrian crouched again.
“What?”
I glanced at the backpack.
Vanessa had never found it.
Dad had hidden a little brass key inside Noah’s stuffed rabbit.
He had sewn the rabbit back together himself.
One week before he disappeared, he had made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would never give the key to Vanessa.
I had never understood why.
Now Adrian Vale was looking at our backpack as if the answer to an eleven-month-old mystery might be sitting inside it.
Before I could speak, the bodyguard who had gone searching returned quickly.
His face was tense.
“We found the man in the gray coat on security footage.”
Adrian stood.
“Who is he?”
“He’s not a passenger.”
“Name?”
The guard hesitated.
Then leaned close and whispered.
Adrian’s expression hardened.
I caught only one word.
Federal.
The guard continued.
“He was watching Vanessa. But that’s not the strange part.”
“What is?”
“He wasn’t watching her when she boarded.”
The guard looked directly at me.
“He was watching the girl.”
Adrian’s eyes moved toward the mustard backpack.
“Elsie,” he said carefully, “what exactly did your father leave you?”
My hands tightened around Noah.
Before I could answer, Noah’s stuffed rabbit slipped from the open backpack and fell onto the floor.
The old stitching across its stomach tore.
A brass key dropped out.
And taped to the key was a tiny folded piece of paper.
Adrian picked it up.
He unfolded it.
His face went white.
Across the paper, in my father’s handwriting, were six words:
IF VANESSA LEAVES THEM, OPEN BOX 317.
Adrian looked toward the airport lockers.
Then the security lights above Gate C22 suddenly went out.
One by one.
May you like
Someone had just cut power to our section of the terminal.
And from behind us, a man said my father’s name.
