Chapter 7
I nearly tore my mother’s house apart.
The security guard lay unconscious beside the back gate.
Someone had struck him from behind.
The camera wires had been cut.
“How long?” I demanded.
My mother was sobbing.
“Maybe ten minutes.”
“Who saw her last?”
“I did. She was coloring in the sunroom.”
Detective Ruiz called an emergency alert.
Every patrol unit in the county received Sophie’s description.
I found one of her shoes near the gate.
The pink strap was broken.
I picked it up and felt the world tilt.
“Daniel,” Ruiz said firmly. “Stay with me.”
“I promised she would be safe.”
“We are going to find her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but panic will cost us time.”
I forced myself to breathe.
The note on Sophie’s pillow was not in her handwriting.
The letters were too neat.
Someone had wanted us to think she left willingly.
A neighbor’s doorbell camera showed a gray van driving away.
The plate was covered.
A woman sat behind the wheel.
A child-sized shadow moved in the back seat.
Cynthia’s phone placed her near the courthouse.
Amanda wore an electronic monitor and had not left her apartment.
Ryan remained missing.
“Then who took her?” my mother cried.
Ruiz studied the footage.
“Someone they hired.”
I called Amanda.
The protective order forbade her from contacting me, but nothing stopped me from calling her with police present.
She answered immediately.
“Where is Sophie?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“If anyone hurts her, I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never see daylight again.”
“You sound unstable.”
Ruiz took the phone.
“Amanda, a child has been abducted. Help us now, and the prosecutor will know you cooperated.”
Amanda laughed.
“Daniel always said Sophie was imaginative. Maybe she ran away.”
I seized the phone back.
“She is five!”
“Then perhaps her grandmother should have watched her better.”
My mother recoiled.
Amanda knew Sophie had disappeared from Margaret’s house.
That detail had not been released.
Ruiz heard it too.
“Where is she?” the detective demanded.
Amanda hung up.
Police arrested her within twenty minutes for violating the spirit of her release conditions and possible involvement in the kidnapping.
It did not bring Sophie back.
Leah traced Cynthia’s companies while Ruiz searched traffic cameras.
Northstar Capital owned six vehicles.
One was a gray van.
It had passed a toll camera heading north.
I got into my car.
Ruiz blocked me.
“You cannot join the pursuit.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And if Ryan is waiting for you, you become another hostage.”
“I cannot sit here.”
She stared at me, then made a decision.
“You ride with me. You follow every instruction.”
We drove north.
The toll record placed the van near the lake property my father once owned.
A development company had purchased the land after the sale, but construction never began.
The old house still stood there.
Ryan knew every room.
So did I.
Police surrounded the property just before sunset.
The gray van was parked behind the house.
No one answered the door.
Ruiz ordered me to remain in the car.
Then I saw movement in an upstairs window.
A small hand pressed against the glass.
“Sophie!”
I was out of the car before anyone could stop me.
Ruiz grabbed my arm.
“Daniel!”
“That’s her room.”
“What?”
“The room Ryan and I shared as children. There’s a narrow back staircase.”
I showed the officers an exterior cellar entrance hidden beneath the porch.
Two officers entered through it.
Seconds later, shouting erupted inside.
A woman ran from the kitchen and was tackled in the yard.
I recognized her as one of Cynthia’s assistants.
Then a gunshot cracked upstairs.
I stopped breathing.
Police pushed through the front door.
Ruiz went with them.
I remained outside because three officers physically held me back.
The waiting lasted forever.
Then Ruiz appeared at the upstairs window.
She raised her hand.
Sophie was alive.
When they carried her out, I broke free.
She reached for me.
“Daddy!”
I held her so tightly she protested.
Her wrists bore red marks from plastic ties.
A strip of tape clung to her hair.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Uncle Ryan said you didn’t want me.”
“He lied.”
“I know.”
I kissed her face again and again.
Ruiz approached.
“Ryan wasn’t here.”
“Who fired?”
“The woman. No one was hit.”
Sophie pulled away enough to look at me.
“Uncle Ryan was here before.”
“When?”
“He left when Grandma Amanda called.”
She meant Cynthia.
“What did they want?” Ruiz asked gently.
Sophie pointed upstairs.
“They made me say things on a camera.”
My blood went cold.
“What things?”
“That Daddy hits me.”
I closed my eyes.
They had kidnapped my daughter to manufacture evidence against me.
Ruiz searched the room.
The camera was gone.
But beneath the bed, an officer found Sophie’s purple crayon.
May you like
She had written four words on the floorboards.
“RYAN WENT TO MOMMY.”
