Chapter 6 - The Greenhouse
Ruiz wanted tactical officers.
I wanted Maya alive.
Those two goals should have supported each other. Instead, every official request had to pass through Harlan, and every minute we spent explaining the situation was another minute the kidnappers could move her.
“We cannot notify him,” I said.
“He controls the major crimes response team.”
“He also has administrative access to the deleted footage.”
“That doesn’t prove he’s involved.”
“It proves he can warn whoever is.”
Ruiz paced across the apartment.
“If we go without support, we could destroy the case.”
“If we wait, they could destroy Maya.”
She looked at the blood on the floor.
Then she made a decision.
“I know two officers I trust.”
“No uniforms.”
“No marked vehicles.”
“Keep them outside the campus perimeter.”
“You don’t give me orders.”
“Then consider it a request from the father of the victim whose case your partner is trying to bury.”
Her eyes flashed.
But she did not disagree.
The abandoned greenhouse stood behind the old agricultural annex, surrounded by dead weeds and rusted fencing. The university had stopped using it six years earlier after a ventilation fire.
At eleven forty-five that night, I approached alone.
The coded notebook was inside my jacket.
A transmitter Ruiz had given me was taped beneath my shirt. She and two trusted officers waited beyond the northern fence.
Rain clicked against the shattered glass roof.
The greenhouse door hung partly open.
“Maya?”
No answer.
I entered.
Rows of dead planting tables stretched through the darkness. Plastic curtains moved in the wind. Water dripped somewhere ahead.
A light turned on.
Maya sat in the center aisle, tied to the chair exactly as she had appeared in the photograph.
A black hood covered her head.
I moved toward her.
“Stop.”
The voice came from above.
A young man stepped onto the metal walkway overlooking the greenhouse.
Connor Vale.
I recognized him from the Founders photograph.
He wore no mask.
That meant either he believed I would never leave or he believed his name alone could protect him.
“Show me the notebook,” he said.
“Show me Maya’s face.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate.”
“I brought what you want. That gives me the only position that matters.”
A second man appeared behind me.
Grant Holloway.
State Senator Holloway’s son.
He held a pistol loosely at his side.
Evan Cross was not there.
“Where’s Evan?” I asked.
Connor’s smile vanished.
“You don’t say his name.”
“My daughter did.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“You’re right. She couldn’t speak after the three of you crushed her jaw.”
Grant moved closer.
“Give us the notebook.”
“First, remove the hood.”
Connor nodded.
Grant pulled it away.
The woman beneath it was not Maya.
She was a mannequin wearing Maya’s coat.
A speaker had been strapped to the chair.
Maya’s recorded scream played from it.
My pulse remained steady, but rage burned through me.
“Where is she?”
“Safe, for now,” Connor said. “Notebook.”
I took it out.
“What did Lily see?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“You attacked her because she discovered payments.”
Connor’s eyes flickered.
Grant looked up at him.
A disagreement.
Small, but visible.
I continued.
“Payments to students? Staff? Police?”
“Shut up,” Grant said.
“Or were they payments from the university to keep victims silent?”
Connor gripped the railing.
“You think this is about a few frightened girls?”
Now I knew there was more.
“Then tell me.”
“You are nothing,” Connor said. “You’re a retired soldier in a rented house with a daughter who should have minded her own business.”
“She nearly died because of you.”
“She nearly died because she ran.”
The words echoed through the greenhouse.
A confession.
Ruiz was recording every syllable.
“What happened that night?” I asked.
Connor realized his mistake.
Grant raised the pistol.
“Enough.”
I held the notebook over a rusted barrel filled with rainwater.
“If I drop this, the ink is gone.”
“You’d lose the evidence too,” Connor said.
“No. Lily never trusted paper alone.”
That was a lie.
But they believed it.
“Where is the copy?” Grant demanded.
“I’ll tell you after I see Maya.”
Connor descended the metal stairs.
“She’s in a vehicle near the old railway access road.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
“And Ortiz?”
His expression gave him away.
Thomas Ortiz was alive too.
Connor stepped within six feet of me.
“Give me the notebook, and they both walk away.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
He reached out.
I handed him the notebook.
He opened it.
The pages were blank.
Not Lily’s notebook.
A replacement.
Connor looked up.
I drove my fist into his throat.
Grant raised the pistol, but the lights exploded around us.
Ruiz had cut the power.
I moved left as the gun fired.
Glass shattered.
Connor tackled me into a planting table. We struck the ground hard.
Grant fired again toward the entrance.
Ruiz shouted, “Police! Drop the weapon!”
He ran.
Connor wrapped an arm around my neck. I drove my elbow into his ribs and rolled him beneath me.
By the time the emergency lights flickered on, Ruiz had Connor at gunpoint.
Grant was gone.
The real notebook remained beneath my jacket.
We found a phone in Connor’s pocket.
On it was a live video feed.
Maya and Ortiz were tied inside the back of a moving van.
A digital clock in the corner counted downward.
Four minutes and thirty-two seconds.
Beneath the clock were the words:
REMOTE IGNITION ARMED.
“They rigged the van,” Ruiz said.
On the video, Maya woke and saw the timer.
Her scream came through the phone.
I grabbed Connor by the front of his shirt.
“Where are they?”
He smiled through bloodied teeth.
“You wanted to know what Lily discovered?”
The timer reached four minutes.
Connor leaned closer.
“She discovered Bradley University doesn’t silence witnesses.”
May you like
His smile widened.
“It buries them.”
