Chapter 3 - THE MEN WAITING OUTSIDE MY SISTER'S HOUSE
The photograph showed my nephews standing outside their elementary school.
Taken that afternoon.
I recognized their backpacks.
Blue for Noah.
Green for Ben.
Someone had been watching them before I ever stepped onto the dance floor.
“Rachel,” I whispered.
I grabbed my phone.
My sister answered on the fourth ring.
“Emily? It's almost midnight.”
“Where are the boys?”
“Asleep. Why?”
“Lock your doors.”
“What?”
“Rachel, please.”
There was a pause.
Then I heard her moving.
“The front door's locked.”
“Check the windows.”
“Emily, you're scaring me.”
I looked at Grant.
He had already taken Victor's phone.
“Send two cars to the Brooks residence,” he ordered. “No lights. No sirens. Nobody approaches the house without my authorization.”
Victor nodded.
Rachel's voice returned.
“Emily?”
“Listen carefully. Don't open the door for anyone.”
A noise sounded through the phone.
Three knocks.
Then a man's voice.
“Mrs. Brooks? Police department. We need to speak with you.”
My heart stopped.
“Rachel, don't answer!”
“But he says—”
“Don't!”
The line went silent.
I stared at my screen.
“Rachel?”
Nothing.
“Rachel!”
Grant took the phone from my shaking hand.
He called Victor's team.
For the next seven minutes, I experienced a kind of terror I had never known.
I could survive humiliation.
I could survive poverty.
I could survive grief.
But I couldn't survive losing those boys.
Finally, Victor's phone rang.
He listened.
Then looked at Grant.
“Two suspects fled when our vehicles arrived. Mrs. Brooks and the children are unharmed.”
My knees buckled.
Grant caught me.
“Breathe,” he said.
I pushed him away.
“Don't tell me to breathe.”
He released me immediately.
“Fair enough.”
I turned to Eleanor.
“Tell me everything.”
She sat down slowly.
“Your father wasn't merely a dance instructor.”
“I know he competed professionally before I was born.”
“He also worked for Thomas.”
Grant's eyes narrowed.
“In what capacity?”
Eleanor hesitated.
“Accounting.”
I blinked.
“My father hated numbers.”
“He pretended to.”
She opened the wooden box again.
Beneath the photograph was a folded letter.
“Daniel discovered that Thomas's business partners were moving illegal money through Whitmore Reserve.”
Grant's expression darkened.
“My father built that company.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said. “And men around him used it for terrible things.”
She handed me the letter.
My father's handwriting covered both sides.
I recognized the careful way he formed capital letters.
Eleanor, if anything happens to me, protect Emily and Rachel. The evidence is hidden where the music never ends.
My eyes burned.
“Where is that?”
“I don't know,” Eleanor whispered.
Grant read the letter over my shoulder.
Then he stopped at the final line.
His jaw tightened.
“What?” I asked.
He pointed.
At the bottom, beneath my father's signature, was a name.
Victor Sloane.
May you like
And beside it, written in red ink:
HE KNOWS WHO ORDERED THE HIT.
