Chapter 3 - The Boy Who Refused to Go Home
By seven in the morning, Chicago had stopped raining.
Gray daylight pressed against the hospital windows.
Nora had been awake for twenty-six hours.
She sat beside Eli with her head tilted against the wall when a paper cup appeared in front of her.
“Coffee.”
She looked up.
Dante stood there.
“No hidden poison?”
His expression almost became a smile.
“Not in this one.”
She accepted it.
“Thanks.”
“How do you drink it?”
“This late? Desperately.”
He sat across from her.
Without the men, the vehicles, and the tension surrounding him, Dante looked less like a legend and more like what he was.
A father who had almost lost his son.
“You can go home,” he said.
Nora glanced at Eli.
“He’ll wake up.”
“I’m capable of sitting beside my own child.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You have been awake all night.”
“So have you.”
Dante looked toward the sleeping boy.
“I have nowhere else to be.”
Nora took a drink.
“I do.”
“Then why are you still here?”
Because your son held onto me like letting go meant going back to someone who was hurting him.
She did not say it aloud.
Instead she shrugged.
“He asked.”
Dante leaned back.
“You do everything people ask?”
“No. Mostly I tell them no.”
“That I believe.”
Silence settled.
It should have been uncomfortable.
It wasn’t.
Then Nora’s phone rang.
Callahan.
She answered.
“Hello?”
Her manager did not bother with hello.
“Where are you?”
“At Lakeshore Memorial.”
“Your shift starts at noon.”
“I know.”
“You planning on coming?”
Nora looked at Eli.
“I don’t think I can.”
A long silence.
“Nora, I covered you twice last month.”
“That was for my landlord meeting.”
“I’m running a business.”
“I understand.”
“If you don’t show, don’t come tomorrow.”
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
“Okay.”
“You’re saying okay?”
“I’m saying I understand.”
The call ended.
Dante had heard enough.
“You just lost your job.”
“I noticed.”
“Because you stayed with Eli.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t turn it into something I can invoice you for.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking that people should not lose jobs for saving children.”
“Welcome to hourly employment.”
He studied her.
“You always this pleasant?”
“Only after twenty-six hours without sleep.”
Her phone buzzed again.
A text.
FINAL NOTICE. PAYMENT BY 5 PM FRIDAY OR LOCKOUT PROCESS BEGINS.
Nora turned the screen downward.
Too late.
Dante had seen it.
His expression changed.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“I can make that problem disappear.”
“And I’m telling you not to.”
“Why?”
“Because I helped your son. I’m not selling you the memory.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s what it would feel like.”
Dante stared at her for several seconds.
Most people, Nora suspected, did not refuse Dante Mercer twice.
She had done it before breakfast.
“Fine.”
“Thank you.”
“But if you are staying here because Eli asked you to, I’ll cover whatever wages you lose.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“No.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“You are exhausting.”
“Your son likes me.”
“That makes one Mercer.”
She smiled despite herself.
Dante did too.
Barely.
Then Eli stirred.
Both turned instantly.
His eyes opened.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“Nora?”
“Still here.”
Eli looked satisfied.
Dr. Morris arrived soon after.
“Good news. His levels are moving in the right direction.”
“When can he leave?” Dante asked.
“Not today.”
Eli visibly relaxed.
Dante noticed.
Dr. Morris did too.
“Given the circumstances, we also need a child protection specialist to speak with him.”
Dante’s jaw flexed.
“He doesn’t need strangers questioning him.”
“He was deliberately given medication by someone trusted with his care.”
Nora watched Dante struggle with the sentence.
Not the accusation.
The fact that another adult now had authority to tell him what his son needed.
Finally he nodded.
“Whatever keeps him safe.”
That afternoon Detective Walsh returned.
Adrian Reed was still missing.
His downtown apartment was empty.
His phone had been switched off at 6:42 the previous evening.
His car had been found in a parking garage near Lake Street.
No suitcase.
No passport activity.
No obvious escape route.
“He planned this,” Walsh said.
Dante stood near the window.
“Reed planned everything.”
“Then he probably planned for suspicion to land somewhere else.”
Walsh looked toward Nora.
She noticed.
“Why are you looking at me?”
“We’re not accusing you.”
“Yet.”
Walsh opened a folder.
“The medication came from a pharmacy on Archer Avenue.”
“So?”
“It was purchased using cash.”
Nora folded her arms.
“Still not seeing me.”
“The store’s security camera recorded the purchaser.”
Walsh turned his tablet around.
The image was grainy.
A woman stood at the counter wearing a hooded coat.
Blonde hair visible.
Approximately Nora’s height.
Nora stared.
“You’re kidding.”
Dante stepped closer.
The timestamp showed three weeks earlier.
Walsh zoomed in.
The woman’s face was mostly hidden.
Nora looked at Dante.
“Tell me you don’t think that’s me.”
He did not answer quickly enough.
Her anger ignited.
“I was working.”
“We’ll verify it,” Walsh said.
“Call Callahan.”
“We already did.”
“And?”
Walsh hesitated.
“Your manager says schedules are handwritten and frequently changed.”
Nora laughed once.
Of course.
Dante looked at the screen again.
“What about payment?”
“Cash.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Waiting.”
Nora grabbed her purse.
“I’m leaving.”
Dante blocked the doorway.
“You’re safer here.”
“I’m apparently also a suspect here.”
“You are not a suspect to me.”
“Five seconds ago you couldn’t even answer.”
“Because I was looking at the photograph.”
“It isn’t me.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Dante looked directly at her.
“Because whoever did this spent months arranging my son’s death to look natural. That person thinks ten moves ahead.”
He pointed toward the image.
“You ran into traffic without shoes good enough to keep your feet dry.”
Nora looked down at her worn sneakers.
“That might be the nicest insult anyone has ever given me.”
“It wasn’t an insult.”
Walsh’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then his expression sharpened.
“Send it.”
A moment later an image appeared on his screen.
Fingerprint analysis from the wrapper.
One partial belonged to Eli.
Another was Nora’s.
The third had been identified.
Walsh looked at Dante.
“Adrian Reed.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Walsh’s second phone buzzed.
He read a message.
“Now we have another problem.”
Dante’s face hardened.
“What?”
“Reed’s financial records show a transfer made yesterday afternoon.”
“To whom?”
Walsh slowly turned the screen toward Nora.
Her name appeared beside a pending electronic payment.
NORA BELL — $50,000.
Nora stopped breathing.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Dante read the transfer details.
“It hasn’t cleared.”
“No.”
Walsh looked at Nora.
“It was scheduled yesterday at 5:14 p.m.”
At 5:14 Nora had been refilling coffee at Callahan’s Grill.
Someone had expected police to find Eli.
Someone had expected Nora to be connected to him.
And before she ever saw the child collapsing beneath that streetlight, someone had already put her name inside the plan.
Nora stared at the screen.
“How did Reed know who I was?”
Dante looked at her.
Then toward the hospital room where his son slept.
“That,” he said quietly, “is the first question we need answered.”
Because suddenly Nora Bell was no longer simply the woman who found Eli Mercer.
Someone had chosen her before Eli ever reached that street.
And if Adrian Reed had selected Nora for a reason, then the most dangerous part of the night had not been the boy collapsing.
May you like
It was discovering that the meeting might never have been an accident.
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