Chapter 14 - ORCHARD HOUSE
Nobody moved for five seconds.
Suspicion was a strange thing when it entered a small room.
It did not need proof to change the temperature.
Luca slowly set his phone on the table.
"No one leaves."
Mara reached for her weapon.
Dante noticed.
"Hands where I can see them."
Mara stared at him.
"You're serious."
"My daughter was taken through a window in my house."
"I am serious about everything now."
Brielle looked at the map.
"Maybe the leak isn't a person."
Luca glanced at her.
"Meaning?"
"The microfilm reader was bugged."
"What if the pages are marked?"
Mara frowned.
"Marked how?"
Brielle picked up one printed map and held it toward the basement light.
Nothing obvious appeared.
Dante took a small UV flashlight from Luca's kit.
"Why do you have that?"
Brielle asked.
"Don't ask questions you don't want answered."
He passed the beam over the page.
A faint pattern glowed near the edge.
Tiny dots.
Luca swore.
"Tracking ink."
"Can ink transmit?"
"Not by itself."
Dante examined the pages.
"RFID dust."
Luca nodded.
"Microscopic tags mixed with toner."
"Harold's printer was compromised too."
Mara let out a breath.
"So nobody in the room leaked Rockford."
Brielle looked at Dante.
"You were ready to accuse us."
"I was ready to test everyone."
"Including your mother?"
"Especially my mother."
Rosa did not object.
They sealed the pages inside a metal toolbox.
Luca checked the signal.
The locator disappeared.
"That bought us some time."
Mara stared at the Rockford camera feed.
The van remained inside the property.
"They're cleaning the house."
"Then we go now."
Dante shook his head.
"They expect that."
"Children could be in that van."
"I know."
"Then what?"
Dante looked at Brielle.
"We use what they expect."
Brielle understood before he explained.
"They think we're following the tracker."
"Yes."
"So we let it move somewhere else."
Luca smiled.
"Now I definitely like her."
They placed one tagged map inside a courier box and paid a rideshare driver in cash to deliver it to an abandoned warehouse on the opposite side of the city.
Within forty minutes, two suspicious vehicles appeared near that warehouse.
The van at Rockford left.
Mara watched it on camera.
"They're chasing the signal."
Dante stood.
"Now we visit the house."
Rockford looked ordinary in daylight.
That was the worst part.
The Orchard property sat on a tree-lined street between a dentist's office and a church.
White siding.
Blue shutters.
A basketball hoop over the garage.
Nothing about it said children had been renamed inside.
Mara stopped at the sidewalk.
Her face drained of color.
Brielle stood beside her.
"We don't have to go in."
Mara looked at the upstairs window.
"Yes, I do."
"No."
"You want to."
"That's different."
Mara breathed slowly.
"I used to sleep in the back room."
"Third window."
"They painted it yellow when I was twelve because a therapist said color would help me feel safe."
Brielle looked at the faded yellow curtains.
"Did it?"
"No."
"Therapist should ask for a refund."
Mara laughed once.
It helped.
Dante and Luca entered through the rear door.
Brielle and Mara waited sixty seconds before following.
The kitchen smelled of bleach.
Cabinets stood open.
Drawers had been emptied.
Someone had removed hard drives from two computers.
Luca crouched beside a trash can.
"Warm coffee."
"They left less than an hour ago."
Mara moved through the hall.
Her steps slowed near a pantry.
"There was a lock here."
Brielle saw four screw holes on the outside of the door.
"They removed it."
Mara opened the pantry.
Empty shelves.
Her hand shook.
"They put me in here when I refused the new name."
Brielle felt rage rise.
She did not tell Mara not to remember.
She stood beside her while she did.
A faint sound came from upstairs.
All four froze.
Scrape.
Then silence.
Dante raised his gun.
"Stay behind me."
Mara rolled her eyes even while afraid.
"Does that line ever work?"
"Almost never."
They climbed.
The back bedroom was empty.
The second room contained stripped mattresses.
The third door was locked.
Luca kicked it open.
A boy sat beneath the window.
He could not have been older than seven.
His wrists were tied with plastic zip ties.
Duct tape covered his mouth.
Brielle pushed past Dante.
"Hey."
The boy recoiled into the corner.
Brielle stopped several feet away.
"I'm not going to touch you."
His eyes were enormous.
Mara crouched slowly.
"My name is Mara."
The boy shook his head violently.
"That's okay."
"You don't have to tell us yours."
He looked at her.
Mara pointed at the old screw holes on the closet door.
"I used to live here too."
Something changed in the boy's face.
Brielle sat on the floor.
"Can we take the tape off?"
He hesitated.
Then nodded.
Mara removed it gently.
The boy gasped.
"They're coming back."
"Who?"
"Aunt June."
"Who is Aunt June?"
"She says I'm David."
Mara went still.
"Are you David?"
The boy's chin trembled.
"I think I'm Noah."
Brielle closed her eyes for one second.
Names were paperwork.
Vittorio had built an entire world around that belief.
"Noah, do you know where the other kids went?"
He nodded.
"Bus."
"Where?"
"Orchard."
Dante looked at Mara.
"This isn't Orchard?"
She shook her head.
"I thought it was just the new name for Bellweather."
Noah spoke again.
"The real Orchard has trees."
"Lots of trees."
"And a red barn."
Luca opened a map.
"Could be half the Midwest."
Noah looked at the phone.
"There's a water tower with a chicken."
Mara's eyes widened.
"I know it."
"Where?"
"Near Harvard, Illinois."
"There's an old poultry processing property north of town."
"Vittorio used it for storage."
Dante looked at the time.
"How long since the van left?"
"Fifty-three minutes."
"We can beat it if they're moving children by bus."
Brielle cut Noah's restraints.
"We're not leaving him here."
"Agreed."
Dante called the Indiana investigator Rosa trusted, not the compromised prosecutor.
He gave her the Rockford address and one instruction.
"Send people you would trust with your own child."
They left Noah with a neighbor until the investigator arrived.
Then they drove north.
The red barn appeared behind bare trees twenty minutes later.
A water tower painted with a cartoon chicken rose beyond it.
Mara stared through the windshield.
"That's it."
Two buses sat near the barn.
Children were being moved toward them.
At least fifteen.
Brielle counted automatically.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
A woman in a gray coat held a clipboard.
Men with weapons stood near the buses.
Dante parked behind a tree line.
"We wait for backup."
Mara looked at the children.
"No."
"There are eight armed men."
"And those buses move in five minutes."
Brielle watched a little girl stumble.
A guard jerked her upright by the arm.
Something inside Brielle went still.
Dante saw it.
"Don't."
"I'm going to the fence."
"Why?"
"Because I look like what I am."
"A woman with six stitches and no sense of self-preservation?"
"A waitress."
She pointed toward a catering van near the barn.
"They're preparing food."
Luca followed her gaze.
"You want to walk in."
"They won't expect me."
Dante stared at her.
"That has been your defense plan all week."
"Still alive."
"Barely."
Mara looked at the catering staff.
"She's right."
Dante closed his eyes.
"I am surrounded by bad decisions."
Brielle touched his sleeve.
"Then make one useful."
Ten minutes later, Brielle wore a borrowed catering jacket and carried a tray of bottled water through the rear gate.
Nobody stopped her.
People who looked like workers were invisible to wealthy criminals too.
She walked past two guards.
One took a bottle without thanking her.
Brielle smiled politely.
Inside the barn, children sat in rows on folding chairs.
Some were toddlers.
Some were teenagers.
All looked frightened.
The woman with the clipboard called names that did not match the children who answered them.
Brielle saw a camera above the loading door.
She adjusted her tray so the small transmitter Luca taped beneath it faced the room.
Live images began streaming to the car outside.
A voice behind her said her name.
"Brielle Dawson."
She froze.
The woman with the clipboard stood ten feet away.
Her gray coat was open now.
A police badge hung from her belt.
Deputy Superintendent Elias Vane smiled at Brielle from the photograph clipped to the woman's clipboard.
The woman herself was not Vane.
She was holding his signed transfer order.
"Mr. Vane said you might come."
Brielle set the tray down.
"He sounds optimistic."
The woman raised a pistol.
"He also said not to damage your face."
Every child in the barn went silent.
Brielle looked at the gun.
"That's oddly specific."
"He wants you recognizable."
"For what?"
The woman smiled.
"Tomorrow night's gala."
Gunfire erupted outside.
May you like
Dante had decided waiting was over.
