Chapter 3 - A Mother’s Last Instruction
Gideon read the message twice.
Then a third time.
Marcus watched his face.
“What?”
Gideon handed him the phone.
Marcus’s expression changed immediately.
“Absolutely not.”
Gideon said nothing.
“You’re not taking Sophie out there.”
“I know.”
“And you’re not going alone.”
Gideon looked toward the broken window.
“That part is negotiable.”
“It isn’t.”
Sophie emerged slowly from beneath the desk.
“Where’s Ava?”
Gideon crouched in front of her.
“She’s outside.”
“With him?”
He did not lie.
“Yes.”
The child started trembling again.
“Silas said he would hurt Mommy if we ran.”
“Where is your mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she alive?”
Sophie’s face crumpled.
“I think.”
Gideon’s chest tightened.
He had spent his life reading adults.
Children were harder because children often did not understand what they knew.
He sat on the carpet.
It was an absurd sight.
A man feared across Chicago sitting cross-legged in a destroyed library before a five-year-old.
“Tell me about your mother.”
Sophie looked at Marcus.
Gideon followed her gaze.
“He’s safe.”
“How do you know?”
The question surprised him.
Sophie repeated it.
“How do you know?”
Gideon almost said because Marcus had been with him for eighteen years.
Then he remembered Ava’s warning.
Everyone else might belong to him.
“I suppose I don’t,” Gideon admitted.
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
“Appreciate that.”
Gideon ignored him.
“But your mother told you to find me. Did she tell you anything else?”
Sophie nodded.
“What?”
“Don’t let the bad man get the necklace.”
Gideon glanced at her neck.
No necklace.
“Where is it?”
Sophie touched her chest.
Then her boot.
Marcus noticed.
“Sophie, don’t—”
But the little girl was already sitting down.
She pulled off one muddy boot.
From inside her sock, she removed a thin silver chain.
At the end hung a small sunflower pendant.
Gideon’s world stopped.
He knew that necklace.
He had bought it two weeks before Ren died.
A tiny gold-and-silver sunflower no larger than his thumbnail.
Ren wore it everywhere.
The chain had not been found after the crash.
Police assumed it had been lost at the scene.
Gideon took one involuntary step backward.
“Where did you get that?”
Sophie held it tightly.
“Mommy.”
“No.”
“She told me to give it to you.”
Gideon could barely speak.
“Your mother had this?”
Sophie nodded.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus stared at the pendant.
“That belonged to Ren?”
“Yes.”
The word felt painful.
Gideon knelt again.
“Sophie, what is your mother’s name?”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah what?”
“Reed.”
Gideon searched his memory.
Nothing.
“Was your mother at the accident?”
Sophie shook her head.
“At the hospital?”
The girl nodded.
Gideon’s heart pounded.
“What does she do?”
“She’s a nurse.”
Marcus looked sharply at Gideon.
“Gideon.”
He understood.
Ren had not died immediately at the crash site.
She had been alive for twenty-three minutes.
The ambulance took her to St. Catherine’s Hospital.
Gideon arrived eleven minutes later.
Doctors had told him she never regained consciousness.
He had held her hand while machines failed one by one.
But if Hannah Reed possessed Ren’s necklace—
Then Hannah had been close to Ren.
Very close.
“Did your mother know Ren?”
Sophie whispered, “Yes.”
“How?”
“She helped her.”
“When?”
“Before she went to heaven.”
The room blurred briefly.
Gideon stood.
He walked toward the window.
He needed distance from the child before grief became anger.
For one year, he had accepted an official story.
Ren had never regained consciousness.
Ren had felt no pain.
Ren had not been afraid.
Those assurances were among the few things that allowed him to sleep.
Now all of it was uncertain.
Marcus came beside him.
“You need to stay focused.”
“My daughter spoke to Hannah Reed.”
“We don’t know that.”
“She had Ren’s necklace.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We’ll find out.”
Gideon looked at the image of Ava beside Silas.
“First we get the girl back.”
A security officer entered.
“We tracked Kane’s movement. He’s near the greenhouse, but there are at least four men outside the north wall.”
“How did they get through?”
“Someone disabled two cameras.”
“Caleb?”
“We think so.”
Gideon nodded.
“Find him.”
The officer left.
Marcus turned.
“What’s the plan?”
Gideon looked at Sophie.
“Silas thinks I’ll bring her.”
“You won’t.”
“No.”
He removed the sunflower pendant from Sophie’s hand.
“Will you trust me with this?”
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
Gideon put it around his neck, beneath his shirt.
“He wants the necklace,” Marcus said.
“Which means he thinks whatever Hannah had is inside it.”
“It’s a pendant.”
“Maybe.”
Gideon examined the flower.
There was a seam along the side.
Very small.
Marcus noticed too.
“Open it.”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because Silas is willing to storm my house for it.”
Gideon looked toward the storm.
“I want him to think he still has a chance.”
Ten minutes later Gideon walked outside alone.
At least visibly alone.
Marcus’s men moved through the dark tree line behind him.
Snow hit Gideon’s face.
The old greenhouse stood eighty yards from the mansion, abandoned since Ren died.
She had loved it.
His former wife grew flowers there.
After the divorce, nobody maintained it.
Its glass roof was cracked.
The structure looked skeletal beneath snow.
Gideon approached.
Ava stood inside the doorway.
Silas Kane was behind her.
He looked almost unchanged.
Fifty-two.
Gray at the temples.
Tailored coat.
Calm eyes.
The kind of face strangers trusted immediately.
“Gideon.”
Gideon stopped ten feet away.
“Ava comes to me.”
Silas smiled.
“You always skip greetings.”
“Let her go.”
“Where’s the younger one?”
“Safe.”
“Then we have a problem.”
Gideon stared at him.
“You killed Ren?”
Silas’s smile faded.
“That is what the girl told you?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed a frightened child?”
“I believed the necklace.”
For the first time, Silas lost control of his expression.
Only for a second.
But Gideon saw it.
“So you know about that,” Silas said.
“I know it belonged to my daughter.”
“Where is it?”
“Let Ava go.”
Silas placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
She recoiled.
Gideon’s voice dropped.
“Take your hand off her.”
Silas did.
“You know, Gideon, this is why you never became what you could have been.”
“What’s that?”
“Truly powerful.”
Gideon almost laughed.
“You crossed my security, betrayed my men, hunted two children through a blizzard, and came here to lecture me about power?”
“I came because Hannah made a mistake.”
“Where is Hannah?”
Silas looked toward the mansion.
“Did Sophie tell you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Ava suddenly shouted.
“She’s alive!”
Silas grabbed her.
Gideon stepped forward.
Three red laser dots appeared across his chest.
He stopped.
Silas whispered into Ava’s ear.
“You should have listened to your mother.”
Ava began crying.
Gideon forced himself to remain still.
“What do you want?”
“The pendant.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No. I know you’re afraid of it.”
Silas’s jaw tightened.
“You always were clever.”
“I learned from better enemies than you.”
Silas sighed.
“The pendant contains something Hannah should have destroyed.”
“What?”
“Evidence.”
“Of Ren’s murder?”
Silas said nothing.
That silence was an answer.
Gideon felt rage rise so violently that for one moment the entire world seemed distant.
He wanted to cross the space between them.
He wanted to forget the rifles aimed at him.
He wanted to become the man Chicago believed he was.
Then Ava looked at him.
Terrified.
And Gideon remembered why he had come.
Not for revenge.
For her.
He reached beneath his shirt.
“Here.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
Gideon removed the necklace.
“Let Ava walk to me.”
Silas considered.
“Place it on the ground.”
“No.”
“Gideon.”
“Girl first.”
Silas smiled.
“You’re negotiating from the wrong position.”
“Am I?”
A distant engine suddenly roared.
Headlights flashed behind the greenhouse.
Silas turned instinctively.
Gideon moved.
He grabbed Ava and dropped behind a stone planter as gunfire shattered glass overhead.
Marcus’s men returned fire from the tree line.
Silas disappeared through the rear door.
“Move!” Marcus shouted.
Gideon lifted Ava and ran toward the mansion.
She clung to him.
“He has Mommy!”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t understand!”
They reached cover.
Gideon set her down.
“What don’t I understand?”
Ava’s eyes were enormous.
“He said Mommy only stays alive until tomorrow morning.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“She hid something.”
“The necklace?”
Ava shook her head.
“The necklace is only the key.”
Gideon stared at her.
“The key to what?”
May you like
Ava looked toward the greenhouse.
“Your daughter’s room.”
