Chapter 5 - Under Milo's Stone
I ran into the corridor yelling for my mother. Mara radioed a description. Security footage showed a woman in scrubs guiding Mom toward a service elevator. Mom walked beside her without resistance, staring at something on the woman's phone.
Then the camera lost them.
“They showed her something,” I said. “A threat.”
Mara asked what my mother would risk her life for. I looked through the glass at Elise, small beneath the hospital blankets.
“Us,” I said.
Elise needed another hour before she could talk for more than a few seconds. When she finally woke, she grabbed my wrist.
“Backyard,” she whispered. “Milo.”
Milo was our childhood dog. We'd buried him beneath an apple tree at our old house, twelve years earlier, and marked the spot with a flat blue stone.
“What's there?” I asked.
“A key. I hid it after I saw Dad.”
I told Mara. She wanted officers at the house, but I insisted on going. At sunset she drove me through streets I knew by heart. Our mother's porch light was on. The back gate hung open.
I dug beneath Milo's stone with a garden trowel. Mud filled my fingernails. Four inches down, metal struck metal.
A small plastic case contained a brass key tagged L-19 and a folded note in Elise's handwriting.
*Locker 19, Union Station. Nora only. Don't let Vivian choose the route.*
Mara read the note over my shoulder. “What's in the locker?”
“I don't know.”
A car engine turned over on the other side of the fence. Mara pulled me behind the apple tree. A dark sedan eased away without headlights.
On its rear window was the same small sailboat sticker I'd seen beside the word DAD on Elise's phone.
May you like
The car stopped at the corner.
Its brake lights flashed three times, like a signal.
