Chapter 15 - No More Hiding
Elena shut the laptop.
“That’s it. Alba leaves now.”
Alba stood her ground. “No.”
“This is not a debate.”
“You brought me here because they wouldn’t watch a schoolgirl. Now they are watching me. Leaving doesn’t erase that.”
Elena’s eyes flashed. “You are eleven.”
“And I’m the reason you finally came back.”
The words hurt both of them.
Police arranged a secure location for Alba and Elena.
Before they left, Alba handed Javier the latch on her backpack.
Inside the plastic buckle was a microSD card.
Javier stared.
“My mother put it there two years ago,” Alba said. “She told me never to open it unless she came back to Altamar.”
Elena looked shocked.
“I forgot about that.”
“You forget weird things.”
The card contained one audio file.
Gabriel Fuentes’s voice.
Recorded shortly before his death.
“I built Mirror Language for Rafael Salcedo as a document-control tool. He turned it into a theft system. Isabel knows. Arturo knows. Clara does not know the full structure. Javier knows nothing.”
Javier closed his eyes.
His father’s guilt was no longer a theory.
Then Gabriel named the person responsible for enforcing silence.
Mateo Rivas.
Police checked his status.
He had never arrived at the holding office.
The two outside security officers escorting him were missing too.
Javier’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
Mateo spoke without greeting.
“You have one hour to restore my access and destroy the B12 archive.”
Javier’s voice stayed steady. “Or what?”
“You keep treating the girl like a witness.”
A pause.
“She’s leverage.”
Elena lunged for the phone.
Mateo hung up.
Then Alba’s prepaid phone buzzed.
A photograph appeared.
May you like
Her school entrance.
Taken less than a minute earlier.
