Chapter 8 - The Hospital Abduction
Hospital cameras showed Grandma leaving in a wheelchair pushed by a man wearing scrubs.
His face was hidden beneath a surgical mask.
A second camera captured the elevator doors opening inside the underground garage.
Deputy Briggs waited beside his patrol car.
He helped lift Grandma into the back seat.
Then he drove away.
Reed’s alert reached every agency in the county.
Briggs had already disabled the vehicle’s tracker.
Victoria sat inside the hospital waiting room when I arrived.
She claimed she had come out of concern.
Her crimson dress had been replaced by a cream suit.
The color changed.
The performance did not.
“You keep bringing danger near Margaret,” she said.
“I brought paramedics.”
“You brought investigators who frightened her.”
“Briggs kidnapped her.”
“You do not know that.”
I showed her the camera image.
Her face remained composed.
Only one finger twitched against her handbag.
“You told him where she was.”
“I have not spoken to Owen.”
Agent Reed entered.
“We subpoenaed your phone records.”
Victoria’s smile faded.
“You called Deputy Briggs four times after Captain Sterling found the watch.”
She crossed her legs.
“I called because Harper assaulted my son.”
“The final call lasted eleven seconds.”
Reed placed a transcript on the table.
MOVE THE OLD WOMAN BEFORE SHE TALKS.
Victoria looked at Conrad’s attorney.
He whispered that she should remain silent.
I leaned toward her.
“If Grandma dies, no forged deed will protect you.”
Victoria met my eyes.
“You sound like your father.”
“Good.”
“He believed threats were strength too.”
“No.”
“My father documented evidence.”
“I learned from him.”
Reed arrested her for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
She did not resist.
As officers escorted her away, she looked over her shoulder.
“Mason has the folder.”
“You will never find what Samuel left for you.”
Thomas called from the estate.
Truck 317 had disappeared from the Sterling Logistics yard.
Security records showed it leaving at 2:58 a.m., less than twenty minutes after Dad’s pocket watch had stopped.
The night he died.
The driver’s signature belonged to him.
Dad had never possessed a commercial driver’s license.
Someone forged the log.
The truck’s last toll record placed it near an abandoned packing plant outside Baytown.
Reed assembled a tactical team.
Lena insisted on accompanying us as a federal observer.
The packing plant sat beside a drainage canal beneath rusted water towers.
Truck 317 stood inside the loading bay.
Its rear doors were open.
The cargo area was empty.
A steel dog cage rested in the center.
Fresh blood marked one corner.
My grandmother’s torn cardigan lay across the floor.
Then a speaker mounted near the ceiling activated.
Mason’s voice filled the warehouse.
“Bring the brass key and Dad’s recording to Pier Nine.”
May you like
“Come alone.”
“Or Grandma goes into the Gulf wearing that cage.”
