Chapter 9 - The Man My Father Threw Out
Graham Voss had waited eighteen years.
That fact frightened me more than anger would have.
Ortiz obtained a warrant for Voss’s home, office, and vehicles.
He was gone.
His house looked abandoned in a hurry. Half a breakfast sat on the kitchen counter. A suitcase was missing. Security drives had been removed.
But in his office, police found a whiteboard.
Five names were written across it.
Daniel.
Claire.
Emma.
Mark.
Vanessa.
Beside each name were dates.
Claire’s date matched the day she vanished.
Vanessa’s date was tomorrow.
“What happens tomorrow?” I asked.
Nobody knew.
Then Claire remembered something.
“Vanessa was terrified last week.”
“Of what?”
“She kept saying, ‘I did what he asked.’ She told Lucas she wanted out.”
My anger shifted.
Vanessa had imprisoned my wife.
Nothing excused that.
But suddenly she might also be a target.
Ortiz ordered alerts across the state.
At 2:13 a.m., police found Vanessa’s car abandoned near the interstate.
Blood marked the driver’s door.
The keys were gone.
Her phone lay smashed beneath the seat.
No Vanessa.
No Lucas.
Then a highway camera showed a black SUV stopping beside her car at 1:46 a.m.
Two men got out.
One was Lucas.
The other wore a baseball cap, but when investigators enhanced the frame, Mark recognized him.
Graham Voss.
Claire stared at the image.
“He found her.”
Ortiz nodded.
I felt no sympathy for Vanessa.
But I understood what the date on Voss’s whiteboard meant.
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Tomorrow was not a meeting.
It was a deadline.
