Chapter 2 — Blood Beneath the Warehouse Floor

Natalie had my bedroom.

She wore the navy cashmere coat Adrian had given me when I graduated from the academy. She cooked my father’s favorite meals in my mother’s kitchen and signed her messages to him with a heart.

She had not merely erased me.

She had stepped into the empty space I left behind.

By sunrise, digital forensics traced the message that exposed me to a prepaid phone registered with my stolen driver’s-license information.

Adrian stood behind the technician’s chair while the report loaded.

"So she sent it herself," he said.

The technician glanced up. "We can prove the account used her identity. We can’t prove who had the device."

"She was a detective. She knew how to hide ownership."

"And what would she gain by exposing herself?" a younger officer asked.

Adrian’s jaw tightened.

"Five years ago, she told me she loved me. I refused her. Owen found out and slapped her in front of half the task force. Three weeks later, she volunteered to go undercover."

He stared at my photograph on the screen.

"She had reasons to hate both of us."

I stood beside him, shaking with a rage no living person could feel.

"I left because I couldn’t face you," I said. "I stayed because I was good at the job. I died because I protected yours."

Adrian heard nothing.

The interrogation-room door opened behind us.

Kane had finally given them an address.

Warehouse Two sat at the abandoned end of the Port Alder shipyard, where rusted cranes leaned over the water like broken skeletons.

Rain had pushed through holes in the roof for years. Rats nested in overturned crates. Salt and oil coated the concrete floor.

Adrian led the search himself.

"Kane wants us chasing ghosts," he told the team. "Photograph everything anyway."

I stopped near the northwest corner.

The room had changed, but I remembered the chain fixed to the floor. I remembered waking between interrogations with my cheek against cold concrete.

Most of all, I remembered carving words into that floor after Kane’s men tore away my fingernails.

I had believed someone would come.

"Over here," an evidence technician called.

Flashlights converged on the corner.

Years of grime had hidden the marks, but blood reagent revealed every desperate line.

DAD. ADRIAN. HELP ME.

I CAN’T FEEL MY HANDS.

I WANT TO COME HOME.

I’M SORRY.

Adrian crouched without breathing.

He traced the air above the letters but did not touch them.

"Her handwriting," he said.

"We’ll test the residue," the technician replied. "The grooves appear to have been made with fingernails or exposed fingertips."

My father turned away.

Adrian remained on his knees.

For the first time in three years, certainty left his face.

"Blood doesn’t prove she died here," he said.

No one had claimed it did.

His phone vibrated.

He answered before the first ring ended.

"Cole."

The digital-forensics analyst spoke quickly enough that Owen stepped closer to hear.

The prepaid phone had just powered on.

"Location?" Adrian demanded.

Keys clattered on the other end of the line.

Then came a pause.

"Captain Mercer’s residence."

My father went pale.

"Natalie is there."

Adrian was already running.

Two units converged on the Mercer house. Adrian took the stairs three at a time and reached the second-floor landing ahead of everyone else.

The front door stood open.

He drew his weapon.

"Evelyn! Port Alder Police! Show me your hands!"

The living room had been overturned. A lamp lay broken beside the couch. One curtain had been ripped from its rod.

Natalie lay curled on the carpet with red marks around her throat.

"She was here," she gasped. "Evie came back."

My father knelt beside her. Adrian searched every room, closet, and window before returning.

"Where did she go?"

"I don’t know. Someone called her, and she ran. She said she hated me for taking her family."

Adrian pressed his radio. "Lock down the bridges, train station, bus terminal, and harbor. Circulate Mercer’s photograph to every patrol unit. She may be injured, but treat her as armed."

I stared at Natalie’s throat.

The marks were too even. The wreckage too carefully spread. No mud by the open door, no rain on the carpet, no sign that anyone had entered from outside.

Natalie had learned from listening to police officers around our dinner table.

But she had not learned enough.

At the hospital, she repeated the story while a physician examined her.

"Evie said I stole Dad and Adrian," she whispered. "She wanted me to die so everything would belong to her again."

Adrian watched her for several seconds.

"Did she say where she’d been?"

"No."

"What was she wearing?"

Natalie hesitated. "Black. A black coat."

"What hand did she use to choke you?"

Another hesitation.

"Both."

"And she answered a phone while using both hands?"

Natalie’s eyes filled with tears. "I was terrified. Maybe I remember it wrong."

Adrian’s face revealed nothing.

"Rest. I’ll assign an officer outside."

She caught his sleeve. "Please stay."

He removed her fingers one by one.

"I have a fugitive to find."

After he left, Natalie’s frightened expression disappeared.

She reached beneath the mattress and took out a second phone.

"You should have stayed dead," she murmured.

Back at headquarters, Adrian sat alone at his desk with my old journal open before him.

He read pages in which I had promised to become the kind of detective he and my father could respect.

Then he tore them out.

"Liar," he whispered.

He dropped the pages into a steel wastebasket and struck a match.

The flames climbed over my handwriting.

With every page that blackened, my body became more transparent.

He added the paper crane I had made at twelve. The tie I bought him with my first paycheck. A photograph from my academy graduation.

Then he found the small brass compass I had once placed in his palm.

On the back, I had engraved a promise.

COME HOME SAFE. I’LL BE WAITING.

Adrian’s fingers closed around it.

He could not throw it into the fire.

"Wherever you are," he said, "I will find you."

The office door opened.

A detective stood there holding a tablet, his face gray.

"Lieutenant, one of Kane’s men gave us a video from Warehouse Two."

Adrian rose.

"What’s on it?"

The detective swallowed.

"Evelyn’s last night alive."