Chapter 3 - The Apartment With the Broken Chain
Gabriel’s convoy reached Dorchester in eleven minutes.
Harper remembered every one of them.
She remembered gripping the leather seat so hard her fingernails bent.
She remembered calling Noah until the phone died.
She remembered Gabriel sitting across from her in the armored SUV, speaking into three different phones without ever raising his voice.
And she remembered one sentence.
“No one shoots unless the child is clear.”
Not unless Harper is clear.
The child.
Noah.
It mattered.
When they turned onto her street, blue lights flashed at the far end.
Harper’s heart stopped.
“Police.”
Gabriel looked through the windshield.
“Not ours.”
“You have police?”
“I have people who owe me favors.”
“That is not the reassuring answer you think it is.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
The SUV stopped half a block away.
Harper reached for the door.
Gabriel caught the handle first.
“Wait.”
“My brother is in there.”
“And that is exactly why you wait.”
Elias spoke through the radio.
“Two uniforms at the front. One unmarked car in the alley. No marked ambulance. No crime-scene van.”
Gabriel’s gaze hardened.
“This isn’t a callout.”
Harper’s stomach dropped.
“What is it?”
“A pickup.”
“For Noah?”
“For something.”
Gabriel opened the door.
“Stay between me and Elias.”
They moved fast.
Harper’s building smelled like old cooking oil and damp carpet. The front door had been forced open. Upstairs, her apartment door hung from one chain.
The chain was broken.
One uniformed officer turned.
“Ma’am, you can’t—”
Harper shoved past him.
“Noah!”
The apartment was empty.
The blanket was on the floor.
The window was open.
Noah’s backpack had been dumped out.
Harper’s knees nearly gave way.
“Noah!”
A young officer grabbed her arm.
Gabriel moved faster.
His hand closed around the officer’s wrist.
“Don’t touch her.”
The officer looked at him, then recognized him.
His face changed.
“Mr. Ashford.”
Gabriel released him.
“Where’s the boy?”
“We received a report that the child had been abandoned.”
“From who?” Harper demanded.
The officer glanced at his partner.
“Anonymous caller.”
“Liar.”
Harper rushed into the bedroom.
The mattress had been slashed.
Drawers pulled out.
Under the bed, Noah’s little wooden music box lay cracked open.
Harper picked it up.
Inside should have been two things: a photo of their mother and an old silver flash drive.
The photo was there.
The flash drive was gone.
Harper stared.
“Oh God.”
Gabriel appeared in the doorway.
“What?”
She turned slowly.
“A year before Mom died, she gave me a flash drive.”
“What was on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never checked?”
“She made me promise not to unless something happened to Noah or me.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“And now?”
Harper looked at the destroyed apartment.
“I think something happened.”
One of Gabriel’s men called from the hall.
“Boss.”
Gabriel stepped out.
Harper followed.
Elias held a building security DVR in one hand.
“Camera in the lobby survived.”
They crowded around a small monitor.
The footage showed Derek entering the building.
But he wasn’t alone.
A second man walked beside him.
Older. Heavyset. Gray hair. Police command bars on his collar.
Harper knew him immediately.
“Captain Raymond Vance.”
Gabriel’s face went cold.
“You know him?”
“Derek’s commanding officer.”
On the screen, Vance looked directly at the camera.
Then he raised his hand and covered the lens.
The video jumped forward six minutes.
When the picture returned, Derek came downstairs alone.
He did not have Noah.
Harper’s breath caught.
“Where is he?”
Elias rewound.
Frame by frame.
There.
At the far edge of the lobby window, a dark van pulled into the alley.
Its rear door opened.
A small sneaker appeared for half a second.
Noah’s sneaker.
Harper’s voice cracked.
“That’s him.”
Gabriel leaned closer.
The van’s plate was mostly hidden.
Mostly.
Three numbers were visible.
Elias typed them into a database on his phone.
Thirty seconds later, his face changed.
“Boss, that van belongs to the city.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“Which department?”
Elias turned the screen around.
Harper read the words and felt the floor move under her.
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BOSTON POLICE EVIDENCE SERVICES.
