Chapter 2 - SIXTY SECONDS IN THE DARK
“Elena!”
Adrian shouted.
Emergency lights flickered red along the ballroom walls.
Guests crowded toward the exits.
Elena spun desperately.
“Noah!”
Vivi stood several feet away.
For the first time that night, she looked genuinely terrified.
“Where is he?”
Adrian grabbed her.
“Where is my son?”
“I don’t know!”
“You were looking toward that corridor before the lights went out.”
“I was looking for security!”
“You’re lying.”
Elena ran toward the service hallway.
Adrian followed.
A security guard lay on the floor beside an overturned catering cart.
He was conscious but dazed.
“Man in gray.”
He pointed toward the kitchen.
“Took the boy.”
Elena made a sound Adrian would remember for the rest of his life.
Not a scream.
Something deeper.
The sound of a mother reliving her worst nightmare.
“No.”
She ran.
Adrian caught up.
They crossed the kitchen.
A cook pointed toward the loading dock.
“He went that way!”
Adrian shoved through the rear door.
Rain hammered the alley.
A black sedan was disappearing around the corner.
Elena stopped dead.
“That car.”
“What?”
“I’ve seen it before.”
“When?”
“For six years.”
Adrian stared at her.
Elena’s face was white.
“Every time I got close to finding Noah.”
Adrian pulled out his phone.
He called his security chief.
“Lock down every exit.”
“Call the police.”
“Get traffic cameras.”
“And find out who owns a black sedan leaving the Bellamy loading dock right now.”
Vivi appeared in the doorway.
“Adrian.”
He turned.
She had lost one shoe.
Her hair had fallen loose.
For once, she looked nothing like the flawless socialite who had entered the gala.
“Please.”
She whispered.
“I can explain.”
Elena stared at her.
“Where is my son?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
“I swear.”
Elena stepped closer.
“You swore six years ago too.”
Vivi’s eyes flickered.
Adrian caught it.
“What happened six years ago?”
Vivi looked at him.
“I wanted a family.”
“That is not an answer.”
“You wanted one too.”
“I wanted a child.”
Adrian’s voice dropped.
“I did not ask you to steal one.”
Vivi began crying.
“You don’t know what happened.”
“Then tell me.”
She hesitated.
That hesitation answered him.
Adrian stepped away.
“You’re still protecting yourself.”
“No.”
“Our son was just kidnapped.”
“He is my son too!”
Elena stared at her.
“No.”
Vivi turned.
Elena’s voice was quiet now.
Almost frighteningly quiet.
“You don’t get to say that tonight.”
Police sirens approached.
Adrian’s phone rang.
His security chief.
“We found the sedan.”
“Where?”
“Registered to a shell company.”
“Who owns it?”
“We’re tracing it.”
“Do it faster.”
“There’s something else.”
Adrian waited.
“The company’s legal representative is Malcolm Voss.”
Adrian frowned.
He knew that name.
Malcolm Voss had once worked for Whitmore Holdings.
Not for Adrian.
For Adrian’s father.
Twenty years earlier.
“What does Malcolm Voss have to do with this?”
Elena whispered.
“That’s the man.”
Adrian looked at her.
“The gray-haired man?”
“Yes.”
Adrian’s phone nearly slipped from his hand.
Malcolm Voss had been his father’s private fixer.
A man who solved problems quietly.
A man Adrian had been told retired years ago.
Adrian looked at Vivi.
She looked away.
“You know him.”
It was not a question.
Vivi remained silent.
Adrian approached her.
“How?”
“My father introduced us.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“Before Noah?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Vivi swallowed.
“Because your father wanted certain problems handled discreetly.”
Adrian’s skin turned cold.
“My father knew?”
Vivi did not answer.
Elena stared between them.
“Knew what?”
Adrian suddenly remembered his father’s reaction when he announced his engagement to Vivi.
Relief.
That was the word.
Not happiness.
Relief.
As if something complicated had finally been resolved.
Adrian looked at Elena.
“Did my father ever contact you?”
She shook her head.
“Not directly.”
“Did anyone mention Charles Whitmore?”
Elena went pale.
“The social worker.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me powerful families didn’t lose custody battles.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
For one terrible moment, he understood.
This was bigger than Vivi.
Maybe it always had been.
His phone rang again.
Security.
“We found the sedan.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned beneath the Westbridge overpass.”
“And Noah?”
A pause.
“No sign of him.”
Elena staggered.
Adrian caught her.
The security chief continued.
“But we found something in the back seat.”
“What?”
“A child’s bow tie.”
Adrian looked down.
Noah’s bow tie had been navy blue.
The security chief spoke again.
“And an envelope.”
“What does it say?”
“Your name.”
Twenty minutes later, Adrian stood beneath the Westbridge overpass.
Rainwater dripped from concrete beams.
Police lights flashed across the abandoned sedan.
An officer handed him a sealed envelope.
ADRIAN WHITMORE.
Written in black ink.
Inside was a single photograph.
Adrian looked at it.
His blood turned to ice.
It showed Elena six years earlier.
She was leaving St. Catherine’s Hospital.
She looked weak.
A bandage was visible beneath her coat.
Behind her stood Malcolm Voss.
On the back of the photograph were seven words.
SHE SHOULD HAVE STAYED GONE THE FIRST TIME.
Elena read them over Adrian’s shoulder.
Her face collapsed.
“He knows I came back.”
Adrian turned the photograph over again.
There was another line.
Smaller.
Almost hidden near the bottom.
MIDNIGHT.
THE OLD WHITMORE HOUSE.
COME ALONE.
Elena whispered.
“It’s a trap.”
Adrian stared into the rain.
“I know.”
She grabbed his arm.
“You can’t go alone.”
“I’m not planning to.”
“But it says—”
“I spent six years unknowingly living inside someone else’s lie.”
Adrian folded the photograph.
“I’m done following their rules.”
Behind them, a detective approached.
“Mr. Whitmore?”
Adrian turned.
“We checked the vehicle.”
“And?”
“No fingerprints except the driver’s.”
“Malcolm?”
“We’re waiting for confirmation.”
The detective hesitated.
“But we found blood.”
Elena stopped breathing.
Adrian’s voice hardened.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“How much?”
“Very little.”
The detective saw Elena’s expression.
“Could be from a cut.”
Elena covered her mouth.
Adrian stepped toward the car.
Then he noticed something beneath the passenger seat.
A tiny piece of folded paper.
He reached down before the detective could stop him.
It was a drawing.
Crayon.
A house.
Three figures.
A man.
A woman.
A small boy between them.
Above the woman, Noah had written one word.
MOMMY.
Above the man:
DADDY.
And in the corner of the page was another figure.
A woman drawn entirely in black.
Adrian stared at it.
Elena whispered.
“Who is that?”
Adrian turned the page over.
There were four shaky words.
SHE KNOWS THE BAD MAN.
Adrian slowly looked toward Vivi.
She was standing beneath a police umbrella twenty feet away.
May you like
Watching them.
And for the first time, Adrian wondered whether Noah had been afraid of his wife long before tonight.
