Chapter 6 - The Diner
The diner waitress remembered Rafael immediately.
"Nervous man. Kept checking the window."
"And the younger man?" Sofia asked.
"Quiet. Angry. Told him, 'You don't get to trade her too.'"
Sofia's throat tightened.
Ethan asked, "Anyone else?"
"Bald guy in a blue jacket at the counter. Watched them the whole time."
Ethan went still.
"Salazar's security chief."
Behind the dumpster, Sofia found a damaged prepaid phone wedged under a drainpipe.
One audio file remained.
Mateo's voice filled the car.
"If Sofia hears this, Dad failed again. Salazar wants the ledger. Dad thinks giving it back will end this. It won't. There are names in that ledger bigger than Salazar."
A car door slammed in the recording.
Mateo whispered, "They're here."
The audio cut.
Sofia replayed it.
This time she heard church bells. Four strikes. Then a freight train horn.
Ethan knew two churches near freight lines within twenty miles.
At the second church they found a maintenance shed.
Inside: food wrappers, a mattress, blood on a towel.
And a sentence scratched into the wooden wall.
SOFI, TRUST THE WEDDING RING.
Sofia looked at her hand.
Ethan removed the ring carefully and found a nearly invisible seam.
He twisted.
The band opened.
Inside was a microSD card.
They loaded it onto an offline laptop.
Mateo appeared on screen.
"Sofi, if you're watching this, Ethan did something stupid enough to marry you."
For the first time in seven years, Sofia heard her brother laugh.
Then his face became serious.
"The biggest name isn't in these files. I hid that separately. If anything happens to me, find the blue house."
The video ended.
A second later, text began typing across the laptop by itself.
May you like
THANK YOU, SOFIA.
Someone had remotely connected.
