Chapter 9 - The Exchange
Quinn read the message twice.
“You’re not going.”
David almost laughed.
“He has a picture of my wife and daughter.”
“We’ll move them.”
“He’ll find them again.”
“We’ll protect them.”
“You protected them yesterday.”
Quinn’s jaw tightened.
David immediately regretted the words.
“This is what he wants,” she said.
“To make you react.”
“I am reacting.”
“You go alone, you give him exactly what he asked for.”
“He wants Rachel’s drive.”
“He wants to know whether we have copies.”
“We do.”
“Then give him the original.”
Quinn shook her head.
“We don’t negotiate evidence exchanges with fugitives.”
David leaned closer.
“I am not asking you to negotiate.”
“Mr. Vance—”
“My daughter is six.”
“My son has spent fourteen months locked underground.”
“If there is even a one-percent chance Mark can reach them again, I’m not sitting in a protected room waiting for another photograph.”
Quinn stared at him.
Then said, “Fine.”
David blinked.
“Fine?”
“You answer him.”
“Under our terms.”
The meeting was arranged for an abandoned roadside motel outside Camp Verde.
Mark insisted David arrive alone.
David appeared alone.
At least that was what he was supposed to believe.
Quinn’s team watched from farther out.
David wore a transmitter sewn inside his belt.
A duplicate flash drive sat in his jacket.
Rachel’s actual drive remained locked in evidence.
The motel had been closed for years.
Broken windows reflected the desert moon.
David entered Room 7.
Nobody was there.
A burner phone rang on the bed.
He answered.
“Mark.”
“You brought cops.”
David looked around.
“No.”
“You were never a good liar.”
The line ended.
A second phone began ringing outside.
David followed the sound.
It came from an old vending machine.
He answered.
“Stop playing games.”
Mark laughed softly.
“Your father used to say the same thing.”
“Where are you?”
“Look across the highway.”
David looked.
A dark figure stood beside an abandoned gas station.
Mark.
Even from a distance, David recognized him.
Broad shoulders.
Black jacket.
Gray hair cut short.
David crossed the road.
Mark did not move.
“You have the drive?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
David held it up.
Mark smiled.
“You think I’m stupid?”
“Yes.”
Mark’s smile disappeared.
“Rachel made copies.”
“We know.”
“She gave one to Leo.”
“We know.”
“Then you know why none of this was supposed to happen.”
David stepped closer.
“My son was eight.”
“And your sister was desperate.”
“You took him.”
“Elena took him.”
“You grabbed him.”
“I removed a witness from an active crime scene.”
David stared.
“You make kidnapping sound like office procedure.”
Mark shrugged.
“For your family, most crimes eventually became office procedure.”
David wanted to hit him.
Instead he asked, “Did you kill Rachel?”
Mark’s face changed.
“No.”
“Did Elena?”
“She pushed her.”
“Rachel hit her head.”
“She was alive when I arrived.”
David felt his heartbeat slow.
“What happened next?”
“Your father happened.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thomas didn’t want an ambulance.”
David’s mouth went dry.
“Rachel was alive?”
“For about twenty minutes.”
“Could she have survived?”
Mark stared at him.
“Yes.”
David felt nausea rise.
“What did my father do?”
“Nothing.”
“That was the problem.”
“He stood there while she stopped breathing.”
David thought of Thomas saying there had been an accident.
“He could have saved her.”
“Maybe.”
“And you?”
Mark’s eyes were flat.
“I was being paid to solve problems.”
David took a step toward him.
Mark’s hand moved beneath his jacket.
David stopped.
“Did you put her in the well?”
“Yes.”
The word was effortless.
“Did Dad help?”
“He watched.”
“Did Elena?”
“She was inside vomiting.”
“And Leo?”
Mark smiled faintly.
“Leo was hiding behind the garden wall.”
David’s fists tightened.
“I saw him before Thomas did.”
“You could have returned him.”
“I could have done many things.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Rachel’s death was survivable.”
“A child witness wasn’t.”
David fought to keep his voice even.
“So you wanted him dead.”
“At first?”
“Yes.”
The world narrowed to Mark’s face.
“Elena stopped you.”
“She had one useful instinct in her entire miserable life.”
“She grabbed Leo and told me if anything happened to him, she would confess.”
David’s hatred became confused.
The woman who had imprisoned his son had also prevented his murder.
Mark continued.
“Thomas agreed she could keep him hidden for a few days.”
“Then a week.”
“Then Elena stopped answering us.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mark laughed.
“Because then I go to prison.”
“Your father goes to prison.”
“Your sister goes to prison.”
“And the company implodes.”
“You all decided my son was an acceptable price.”
Mark looked almost bored.
“Your father did.”
“Elena convinced herself she was protecting him.”
“I saw him as a liability.”
“At least I was honest about what I was.”
David’s transmitter picked up every word.
He hoped Quinn was hearing it.
“Why do you want the drive?”
“Rachel documented everything.”
“Not just Elena’s fraud.”
“What else?”
Mark’s expression sharpened.
“Your father’s company paid bribes.”
“Illegal land deals.”
“Kickbacks.”
“Politicians.”
“Inspectors.”
“Nothing cinematic.”
“Just twenty years of rich people assuming rules were for somebody else.”
“Rachel found enough to bury Thomas.”
“And you?”
“She found my payments too.”
“Where are the other copies?”
Mark smiled.
“That’s the problem.”
“I don’t know.”
David held up the drive.
“Then take this and disappear.”
Mark studied him.
“You’d let me go?”
“To keep my family safe?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said tonight.”
David tossed the flash drive onto the pavement.
Mark watched it land.
He did not move.
“You pick it up.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your police friends are waiting for me to bend over.”
David’s stomach tightened.
Mark pointed across the road.
A faint red light blinked on a rooftop.
A police optic.
He had spotted them.
“Tell Detective Quinn she needs younger snipers.”
Mark stepped backward.
Sirens erupted.
Police vehicles surged from both ends of the road.
Mark ran.
He vaulted a barrier and disappeared behind the gas station.
David followed before anyone could stop him.
“MARK!”
Quinn shouted behind him.
“DAVID, STOP!”
David rounded the building.
Mark was climbing into a motorcycle hidden in the alley.
David grabbed the rear of his jacket.
Mark spun and struck him across the face.
David fell.
The motorcycle engine roared.
Then a police SUV blocked the exit.
Mark abandoned the bike and ran toward the desert.
Officers followed.
Gunfire cracked once.
David froze.
Then again.
Quinn dragged him behind a concrete wall.
“Stay down!”
Lights swept the brush.
Officers shouted.
Ten minutes later, they found blood.
But no Mark.
He had escaped into a drainage channel.
The search continued all night.
At dawn, David sat on an ambulance bumper with a split lip.
Quinn approached.
“You got the confession.”
“Did you record it?”
“Every word.”
David nodded.
“Then it was worth it.”
“No.”
Quinn stared at him.
“You running after an armed fugitive was not worth it.”
David looked away.
She sat beside him.
“Mark said something important.”
“What?”
“He said Rachel had multiple copies.”
David rubbed his face.
“We know.”
“No.”
“You’re missing it.”
“Rachel was an accountant.”
“Careful.”
“Methodical.”
“If she believed she could be killed, she wouldn’t rely on a single flash drive hidden by chance in an eight-year-old’s pocket.”
David looked at her.
“You think there’s another one.”
“I think there’s probably a dead-man switch.”
“Email.”
“Storage.”
“Something.”
“Where?”
Quinn smiled grimly.
“That’s what Mark is trying to find.”
David’s phone buzzed.
A message from Sarah.
LEO REMEMBERED SOMETHING.
David called instantly.
“What?”
Sarah put Leo on speaker.
The boy’s voice sounded sleepy.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“The lady Rachel said something to me.”
“What?”
“She said if grown-ups lie, I should remember the yellow bird.”
David frowned.
“The yellow bird?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
Sarah interrupted.
“I might.”
David waited.
“Your mother had a cabin.”
“Before she died.”
“She called it Yellowbird.”
David went completely still.
His late mother’s cabin had been closed for almost nine years.
Nobody in the family used it.
Almost nobody even remembered it existed.
Except perhaps Rachel.
May you like
Because Rachel had managed Evelyn Vance’s trust.
And Evelyn’s trust was exactly where the missing money had first been discovered.
