Chapter 5 - The Memory I Had Buried
Three years earlier.
County shelter.
Rain.
An injured Doberman.
I remembered pieces.
Not Julian.
Not clearly.
But Bishop?
Maybe.
Back then I treated hundreds of animals.
I closed my eyes.
Then a memory surfaced.
A black Doberman brought in after midnight.
No intake paperwork.
A nervous man claiming he'd found him near the highway.
I treated a cut on his paw.
And removed something from between his pads.
A tiny piece of metal.
At the time, I thought it was road debris.
I put it in an evidence bag because the dog was technically a stray.
“What happened to the bag?” Adrian asked.
“Shelter archives.”
We drove there the next morning.
The building had changed.
New director.
New staff.
But old evidence records were stored downstairs.
After two hours, we found the intake number.
The bag was missing.
The log showed someone collected it.
Name:
M. Bell.
Marcus.
My skin prickled.
“What was inside?” Adrian asked.
“I don't know.”
Bishop suddenly pulled toward an old cabinet.
I opened it.
Nothing.
Then I remembered.
The metal fragment had looked familiar.
Not road debris.
A broken cuff link.
Silver.
Engraved.
Two letters.
R.V.
Rener Voss?
No.
Rener's surname wasn't Voss.
Adrian stared at me.
“My uncle.”
“What?”
“Richard Voss.”
His father's younger brother.
According to Adrian, Richard had died five years earlier.
Except no body had ever been recovered.
A boating accident.
Presumed dead.
Julian had suspected otherwise.
We returned to the estate.
Rener finally told us everything.
Richard Voss had created the modern version of the Ledger after Adrian's father died.
Marcus worked for him.
Rener had discovered pieces of the operation but couldn't prove Richard was alive.
Julian got closer.
Too close.
The night Julian died, Bishop chased someone from Julian's garage.
The dog returned injured.
That was when I treated him.
The cuff link belonged to the man Bishop chased.
Richard.
“You're saying my uncle killed Julian,” Adrian said.
Rener shook his head.
“I'm saying Julian believed Richard was responsible.”
Adrian's face became stone.
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
Then my phone rang.
Eli.
I answered.
Static.
Then his voice.
“Ren?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. But there's something weird.”
“What?”
“A package came.”
My stomach tightened.
“Don't touch it.”
“Too late.”
“Eli.”
“It's just an envelope.”
“What’s inside?”
Silence.
“A picture.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
My mouth went dry.
“When?”
“Today.”
Adrian was already signaling security.
Eli continued.
“And there's a note.”
“Read it.”
His voice changed.
“Walk away from the dog.”
The call disconnected.
We reached Eli's apartment fifteen minutes later.
He was safe.
The photograph showed me outside the shelter that morning.
Taken from across the street.
Richard was watching.
Adrian moved Eli onto the estate.
For the first time, I didn't argue.
That evening, Bishop lay between Eli and me while Adrian stood at the window.
“You should hate me,” he said.
“For what?”
“My family brought this into yours.”
“Your family also paid for medical treatment we didn't know how to afford.”
“That doesn't erase anything.”
“No.”
He turned.
“But neither does guilt fix it.”
He looked tired suddenly.
Not like Adrian Voss.
Just Adrian.
“I spent my life thinking power meant knowing what happened inside my own walls.”
“And now?”
“Now I'm discovering my dead brother understood my house better than I did.”
I approached him.
“You believed the wrong people.”
“That can get people killed.”
“It can also be corrected.”
His gaze dropped briefly toward my hand.
Then back to my face.
The space between us changed.
Not romance exactly.
Not yet.
Trust.
Something more dangerous for people like us.
Then Bishop stood.
Walked toward Adrian.
And placed his head against Adrian's hand.
Adrian froze.
“He hasn't done that since Julian died.”
I smiled.
“Maybe he's correcting something too.”
For one second, Adrian smiled back.
Then every light in the estate went out.
Emergency generators failed.
Security radios died.
Bishop began barking.
From somewhere upstairs, glass shattered.
Adrian pulled me behind him.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
“Ren.”
Then Eli screamed.
I ran.
We reached his room.
Empty.
Window open.
But on the bed was a phone.
It began playing automatically.
A man's voice.
Calm.
Older.
“You've spent three years looking in the wrong direction, Adrian.”
Adrian's face went white.
He knew the voice.
“Richard.”
The recording continued.
“If you want the Callaway boy alive, bring Bishop to the old Voss greenhouse at midnight.”
Then came the final sentence.
“And bring Ren. She has something that belongs to me.”
The message ended.
I looked at Adrian.
“What could I possibly have?”
He didn't answer.
Bishop walked toward me.
His nose pressed against the necklace beneath my shirt.
My father's necklace.
The one I'd worn for fourteen years.
Adrian stared at it.
“Take that off.”
I did.
He turned it over.
On the back was a tiny seam.
A compartment.
Inside was a micro-storage chip.
May you like
My father hadn't left me a necklace.
He'd left me evidence.
