Chapter 8 - THE MAN IN THE GRAY CAR
Grandpa knew the car.
That was the first thing he said.
Detective Alvarez enlarged the photograph.
A gray sedan was reflected in the window of Grandpa’s truck.
Only part of the license plate was visible.
Grandpa leaned forward.
“That car used to sit near the rail yard.”
Dad frowned.
“Recently?”
“Last winter.”
“You never told me.”
“I assumed somebody was visiting one of the houses nearby.”
Alvarez wrote something down.
“How often?”
“Three or four times.”
My stomach tightened.
Miranda had been planning this far longer than any of us understood.
The partial plate led police to a rental company.
The renter had used a business account.
Dayton Family Neurology.
Dr. Aaron Wells.
Miranda’s brother.
Dad stood so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
“He followed my father?”
“Looks that way,” Alvarez said.
“Why?”
“Possibly to document behavior they could misrepresent.”
Grandpa gave a dry laugh.
“What did they get? Me buying groceries?”
“Maybe.”
“Me forgetting where I parked?”
Alvarez looked at him.
“Did you?”
“No. But at seventy-one, if I stand in a parking lot long enough, somebody can probably take a photograph that looks confused.”
That was the point.
They didn’t need reality.
They needed moments.
A picture without context.
A sentence without context.
A frightened teenager screaming after being cornered.
A tired father signing documents without reading.
Pieces.
Miranda had been building us out of pieces.
That evening, Dad finally returned to our house with police permission to collect clothes.
Grandpa went with him.
I stayed with a victim advocate named Rachel.
They were gone almost two hours.
When Dad returned, he carried a cardboard box.
“What’s that?”
He set it on the table.
“Things from Miranda’s closet.”
Grandpa followed him inside.
His expression was different.
Not angry.
Disturbed.
Dad opened the box.
Inside were folders.
Photographs.
Printed emails.
Copies of Grandpa’s utility bills.
My school schedules.
Dad’s work calendar.
Copies of my mother’s trust documents.
Miranda had kept an entire file on us.
I picked up one photograph.
It showed me getting off the school bus.
Taken from across the street.
Another showed Grandpa outside his bank.
Another showed Dad leaving work.
“She was watching us.”
Dad shook his head.
“Her brother was.”
“How do you know?”
Grandpa pulled another item from the box.
A small spiral notebook.
Initials filled the pages.
E.
D.
G.
Elias.
Daniel.
Me.
Next to the initials were dates, locations, and short observations.
G - BANK 10:14. SPOKE TO TELLER 7 MINUTES.
D - NIGHT SHIFT. HOME 7:08 A.M. ASLEEP BY 8.
E - SCHOOL COUNSELOR ATTEMPT. INTERCEPTED.
My blood went cold.
Intercepted.
That was how they described the day I tried to ask for help.
Like I was a package.
Dad flipped pages faster.
Then stopped.
“What?”
Grandpa leaned over.
Dad turned the notebook toward us.
A date had been circled.
My seventeenth birthday.
Beside it were two words.
PHASE TWO.
Alvarez took the notebook immediately.
“What is Phase Two?”
Nobody knew.
But there was a page missing directly after it.
Torn cleanly from the spiral.
Grandpa examined the torn edge.
Then he looked toward the box.
“There was something else in the closet.”
Dad nodded slowly.
“I didn’t understand what it was.”
He reached inside and pulled out a white envelope.
Inside were two plane tickets.
One for Miranda.
And one with my name on it.
They were dated three days after my seventeenth birthday.
Destination:
May you like
Phoenix, Arizona.
I had never agreed to any trip.
