Chapter 3 - THE PAGE THAT DISAPPEARED
The missing page was not a medical report or a witness statement.
It was a route authorization.
Nathan recognized the format immediately. Every convoy leaving a private meeting was assigned a route number, a backup road, and the name of the person who approved the final change.
Page eighteen should have contained all three.
Without it, the official investigation had concluded that the ambush was carried out by an outside crew that somehow discovered the convoy's location.
Nathan had accepted that explanation because Grant had presented it.
Now he asked Matteo to retrieve the archived dispatch records from the night of the attack.
“Those records were transferred to storage,” Matteo said.
“Then bring them back.”
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Dennis Pike hasn't reported for work, and his apartment is empty.”
Nathan's jaw tightened. “Find him before Grant does.”
At the same time, Claire was packing Lily's spare clothes into a canvas bag. She had not been fired, but she knew how quickly that could change. The accusation had followed her through every hallway. Staff members stopped speaking when she entered a room.
She could survive losing the job.
What she couldn't survive was having Lily caught in the middle of a dangerous man's private war.
Nathan found her in the laundry room.
“You're leaving.”
Claire kept folding.
“I think it's best.”
“Because of the money?”
“Because my daughter is being watched.”
Nathan's expression changed. “Has someone threatened her?”
“No. But Grant keeps asking what she saw. And she saw enough to make him uncomfortable.”
Nathan moved closer. “I won't let anything happen to her.”
“You can't promise that.”
He had no answer.
Claire looked at him. “You have guards, cameras, locked gates. You have people who obey you because they're afraid. But my little girl doesn't understand any of that. She thinks the man who gives her cookies is her friend.”
Nathan lowered his gaze.
“I know.”
“Then let us go.”
“I can't clear your name if you disappear.”
“I don't need you to clear my name. I need you to let us live.”
Her words hurt because he knew they were true.
He took a breath. “Give me forty-eight hours. I'll have the money traced, the footage preserved, and the accusation withdrawn. After that, if you still want to leave, I'll arrange a safe way for you to do it.”
Claire studied him.
“Forty-eight hours. Not one more.”
“Agreed.”
That evening, Lily brought Nathan a new drawing. It showed a blue rectangle, a staircase, and a stick figure with a very large watch.
“Who's this?” Nathan asked.
“The tall man.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No. But he talks to the smile man.”
Nathan looked at the drawing carefully. Lily had colored the watch bright silver and drawn a small black mark beside it.
“What's that?”
“His watch has a scratch.”
Nathan remembered the security supervisor's watch. Dennis Pike wore a silver watch with a dark scratch across the face.
He showed the drawing to Matteo.
“Pike,” Matteo said. “It has to be.”
Before midnight, Matteo found Pike's car abandoned behind a closed gas station. Inside the glove compartment was a receipt from a storage unit rented under a false name.
The unit was empty except for a torn folder and a photograph.
The photograph showed Grant standing beside the black SUV that had blocked Nathan's convoy two years earlier.
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On the back, someone had written:
THE SECOND ROUTE WAS NEVER AN ACCIDENT.
