Chapter 9 - The Boy on the Manifest
Midnight was four hours away.
Mara sent units to the airfield while Vermont police rushed to the Brooks home.
Thomas Brooks answered on video from his kitchen, pale and shaking.
Behind him, family photographs covered the refrigerator.
One showed a boy with dark hair and a crooked front tooth.
Thomas told us Anne had received an envelope two weeks earlier containing a photocopy of an old hospital bracelet.
YOUR SON HAS A BROTHER. ASK ST. MATTHEW'S WHAT THEY SOLD YOU.
Anne called the number on the back.
It belonged to Grant Vale's law office.
"Why didn't you go to police?" Mara asked.
Thomas looked ashamed. "Because our adoption attorney told us years ago that any challenge could take Eli away. We were terrified."
"Who was the attorney?"
"Grant Vale."
The same man stood on both sides of the fraud.
He controlled the trust paperwork afterward.
Thomas said Eli was safe at school with officers now.
The charter manifest was fake bait.
Vanessa wanted us at the airfield.
Mara realized it seconds before dispatch called.
The alarm at my house had triggered.
I called the child advocate assigned to stay with him.
Then my security camera feed went black.
We reached the house in twelve minutes.
The advocate was conscious but dazed in the foyer. She had been shoved into a wall when two masked people forced their way inside.
"Oliver hid," she said. "I think he hid."
Then I heard three knocks from inside the wall.
I opened the service panel.
Oliver crawled out trembling.
He had my phone charger wrapped around his fist like a rope.
"They wanted the tablet," he whispered.
"Did they get it?"
"No. But they got Mom's picture."
Inside was something one intruder had dropped.
May you like
A hospital identification badge.
DR. PETER SLOAN.
