Chapter 13 - MIA
Mia Santos was found at a bus station two hours later.
A clerk recognized the Amber Alert extension.
She was seven now.
Thin.
Quiet.
Alive.
Emily did not question her immediately.
A child interviewer did.
Mia remembered Daniel's car.
She had been in Judge Reed's courthouse car with a placement worker.
They stopped in a garage.
Reed got out.
Mia saw him meet a man near Daniel's vehicle.
The man opened the hood.
"Was it Dr. Hale?"
Mia shook her head.
"Mr. Ryan."
Emily froze.
Ryan had claimed he only followed Daniel.
Mia identified him from a photo array.
Ryan Bennett had opened Daniel's hood.
Then Judge Reed handed him something.
A small metal tool.
Ryan was not adjacent to the murder.
He was inside it.
Emily returned to the jail.
Ryan looked at her face and knew.
"Mia."
"She's alive."
His shoulders fell.
"You touched Daniel's car."
Ryan said nothing.
"Eight years old," Emily said. "That's Ethan. Five is Lucy. You lived in their house. Ate their food. Read bedtime stories. After helping kill their father."
Ryan whispered, "I didn't mean for him to die."
Emily almost laughed.
"There it is."
Ryan claimed Hale ordered the brake line weakened enough to scare Daniel.
Reed wanted the audit stopped.
The line failed completely on the interstate.
Another accident that became murder after consequences arrived.
Then Ryan gave them Reed's final safe house.
A lake cabin near the Alabama border.
Federal agents moved.
The cabin was empty.
But a wall map showed escape routes.
One line ended at Nashville International Airport.
Another at a freight yard.
A third at a downtown building.
Emily recognized it.
Her own police station.
Then Collins called.
A prisoner-transport officer had arrived with paperwork ordering Ryan moved to federal custody.
No such transfer had been approved.
Emily ran back.
Too late.
May you like
Ryan's holding cell was empty.
And the fake transport officer had used Captain Bell's old access code.
