Chapter 10 - THE EMPTY HOUSE
Ortiz grabbed my arm before I reached the parking lot.
“You are not going alone.”
“The message says—”
“I don’t care what the message says.”
Neither did I.
I cared that my mother was seventy-eight, still bruised from the pool, and somewhere with people who had spent months planning how to make her disappear.
Police reached my house in nine minutes.
The front door was locked.
The security guard’s chair near the entry was empty.
We entered through the garage.
“Mom?” I shouted.
No answer.
Her bedroom was empty.
The kitchen was empty.
Then an officer found the security guard in the pool house bathroom, conscious but groggy. Someone had hit him from behind and locked the door.
On the patio, Mom’s cane lay beside the pool.
I stopped breathing.
Ortiz touched my shoulder. “No blood.”
On the table was a burner phone.
It rang.
Ortiz motioned for me to answer on speaker.
Bianca’s voice filled the patio.
“You finally believe her.”
“Where is my mother?”
“Safe for now.”
“You touched her again and I swear—”
“Don’t perform, Julian. You had months to believe her. You chose me.”
The words cut because they were true enough to hurt.
“What do you want?”
“A meeting.”
“With who?”
“Just you.”
Ortiz shook her head.
Bianca continued. “Bring the original trust documents from Samuel’s cabinet.”
Now I understood.
This was no longer about hiding what she had done.
She wanted something.
“Why?”
Bianca laughed softly.
“Because your father made one mistake when he wrote that trust.”
I looked at Ortiz.
“What mistake?”
“The kind worth killing for.”
The line went dead.
One minute later, my phone received a photograph.
Mom was sitting in a chair in an unfamiliar room.
Her hands were tied.
Behind her was a framed sign on the wall.
I zoomed in.
VANCE DEVELOPMENT — EAST RIDGE PROJECT, 2012.
May you like
I knew exactly where they had taken her.
The abandoned model home my father had built fourteen years ago.
