Chapter 4 - Nobody Leaves Cedar Ridge
Evan Mercer looked older.
Thinner.
A scar crossed his chin.
Kaye couldn't move.
“You're alive.”
Evan looked at Dominic.
“Unfortunately.”
Kaye crossed the room and punched him.
Hard.
Evan staggered.
Mateo almost smiled.
“Six years,” Kaye said. “You let your son think you abandoned him.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“Everybody says that right before admitting they ruined my life.”
“Where's Toby?”
Evan's face changed.
“You don't have him?”
Kaye lunged.
Dominic restrained her.
“Answer her.”
“I came because I learned August had taken him.”
Dominic stiffened.
Evan explained.
Years earlier, Dominic's father had discovered someone stealing from the Vale organization.
Michael Vale investigated.
Evan helped.
They discovered August was selling information to rivals.
Michael planned to expose him.
Then Michael died.
Officially, a car accident.
It wasn't.
Evan possessed evidence.
August threatened Kaye and infant Toby.
So Evan vanished.
Kaye listened without blinking.
“You could have told me.”
“No.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“If you'd known, they would have known.”
Kaye's voice cracked.
“You missed six birthdays.”
Evan lowered his head.
“I counted every one.”
That did not forgive anything.
But it hurt differently.
Dominic asked about Toby.
Evan had tracked August to the mill, then to Dominic's estate.
But Toby had already been moved.
“To where?”
“I don't know.”
Dominic's phone buzzed.
A photograph arrived.
Toby sat in a chair.
Unhurt.
Terrified.
Behind him was a red door.
The message read:
MIDNIGHT. BRING MICHAEL'S LEDGER.
Dominic looked toward the locked archive.
“There is no ledger.”
Evan shook his head.
“There is.”
“Where?”
Evan looked at Kaye.
Her anger disappeared.
“No.”
Evan swallowed.
“I hid it somewhere August would never search.”
“Where?”
“In something belonging to you.”
Kaye thought of her house.
The diner.
Boxes Evan had left behind.
Then she remembered an old recipe book.
Evan's mother's cookbook.
It had sat above the grill at Mercer’s Kettle for six years.
They raced back.
Kaye unlocked the diner.
The cookbook was gone.
In its place sat Toby's dinosaur Band-Aid.
Dominic picked it up.
Someone had written an address across the wrapper.
Kaye recognized it.
Her own childhood home.
The house had been empty for fifteen years.
They drove there.
The porch sagged.
Windows were boarded.
Kaye approached.
The front door stood slightly open.
Then a light appeared upstairs.
A child's shadow crossed the window.
“Toby!”
Kaye ran.
Dominic followed.
She reached the front door.
It opened before she touched it.
A woman stood inside.
Kaye hadn't seen her since she was seventeen.
May you like
Her mother smiled.
And behind her, someone whispered Toby's name...
