Chapter 9 - The House Where Sarah Waited
Torres assembled a search team and kept Nathan away from the first entry at the pumping station.
They found a basement room converted into an improvised sickroom.
The mattress was warm, but Sarah was gone.
A blood-stained towel suggested that her head injury had required urgent care.
The team collected medicine packaging and traces of a sedative for laboratory analysis.
Nathan felt powerless while investigators photographed the room his sister had occupied.
He recognized her handwriting on a grocery list beside the mattress.
Even now, she had written 'buy Lily strawberries' at the top.
Sarah had always hated strawberries.
Lily loved them.
A handwritten timetable appeared on the reverse, listing truck arrivals at the pumping station and the time the gatekeeper changed shifts.
Grace suspected Sarah had created a map of her captors' routine.
Nathan noticed a tiny arrow beneath one date, pointed toward the river.
When he touched the paper, he saw a faint imprint on the next page.
It was a phone number.
Investigators traced the number to a public defender named Michael Shaw.
Shaw confirmed that a woman calling herself Sarah had contacted him for help, claiming she was being held under threats against her children.
He had arranged to meet her, but she never arrived.
Before Shaw could explain where, his office received a courier package.
Inside were photographs of Nathan's medical license and a warning that his hospital privileges would be challenged if he continued.
The courier had also delivered a second envelope.
Shaw opened it in front of Torres.
There was a single page, bearing Sarah's fingerprints in red ink.
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Its message read, 'The man who owns the river is not Marcus.'
