Chapter 8 - The Man in the Warehouse
Detective Torres told me not to respond.
The kidnapper sent a second photograph.
This one showed Samuel Reed’s face more clearly.
He was older than the picture on his investigator’s license.
His beard was long.
His left eye was swollen shut.
But he was alive.
A handwritten sign rested against his chest.
MIDNIGHT.
ALONE.
Daniel watched the screen.
Then he typed.
“They want Dad’s files.”
“Yes.”
“They think tablet has all.”
“Does it?”
Daniel looked toward Detective Torres.
“Not all.”
He opened the settings menu and entered a sixteen-digit password.
A hidden cloud account appeared.
Dad had taught him to back up everything automatically.
The recordings were stored on servers outside the country.
Deleting the tablet would change nothing.
Torres almost smiled.
“Your father planned carefully.”
Daniel’s fingers paused.
“Dad died anyway.”
No one knew how to answer that.
Police traced the photograph’s metadata.
It had been stripped.
The warehouse contained no visible signs, windows, or unique machinery.
But Daniel noticed a faded yellow stripe on the floor.
He enlarged the image.
“Cold storage.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Dad took me.”
He searched his photographs from two years earlier.
One showed Daniel standing beside Dad in a commercial warehouse.
The same yellow stripe ran along the floor.
Dad had invested in a refrigeration company called Halcyon Foods.
The property had been closed after his death.
Mom controlled it temporarily through the estate.
Torres organized a tactical team.
I was instructed to reply that I would bring the tablet.
Instead, officers prepared a duplicate device.
Daniel insisted on helping configure it.
He created a screen that looked like his file system, but opening the Dad folder activated the camera and transmitted the location.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told him.
He typed without looking up.
“They use people thinking I cannot.”
“What do you mean?”
“They think I cannot understand.”
“They think I cannot plan.”
His jaw tightened.
“I can.”
At eleven thirty, I drove toward Halcyon Foods with the duplicate tablet in a canvas bag.
Police vehicles followed at a distance.
Daniel remained in a command van with Torres.
The warehouse door stood open.
Inside, a single overhead light illuminated Samuel Reed.
Mom stood behind him.
Elias was nowhere in sight.
“You came,” Mom said.
“Where is Elias?”
“He left me.”
Her voice trembled.
For one dangerous second, she looked like the mother who once held my hand during thunderstorms.
Then I saw the gun beside her leg.
“Give me the tablet.”
“Release Samuel first.”
Mom smiled bitterly.
“You still think you’re negotiating.”
A metal door slammed behind me.
May you like
Elias stepped from the darkness.
He was wearing Dad’s coat.
