Chapter 3 - The Boy in Oregon
The private jet touched down in Portland just after dawn.
Sebastian had not slept.
For four hours, he sat in the dark cabin with Madeline’s letter open in his hands, reading every page as though the words might rearrange themselves into a different ending.
They never did.
Vincent sat across from him, speaking quietly into his phone.
“Two cars waiting at the private terminal,” he said. “Local team is already checking the address.”
Sebastian looked out the window at the wet gray runway.
“Local team?”
“I called people we trust.”
“There are people in Oregon we trust?”
“There are people who owe us.”
Sebastian’s eyes turned cold.
“I don’t want anyone who owes us.”
Vincent paused.
Sebastian continued, “I want people who can protect a child without bringing our world to his doorstep.”
Vincent stared at him for a moment.
Then nodded slowly.
“I’ll make new calls.”
The address Madeline had left was in Astoria, a quiet coastal town where the Columbia River met the Pacific. It was nearly two hours from Portland through roads lined with dark pine trees and rain-silvered fields.
The farther they drove from the city, the more Sebastian felt like an intruder in another life.
There were no glass towers here. No black SUVs outside restaurants. No men speaking in code.
There were diners, gas stations, fishing boats, school buses.
Ordinary places.
The kind of places Madeline had once said she wanted to live.
“Maybe someday,” she had told him years ago, lying against his chest in his Houston apartment, “we’ll go somewhere nobody knows your name.”
At the time, Sebastian had kissed her forehead and said, “Nobody knowing my name would be dangerous.”
Madeline had smiled sadly.
“Maybe that’s the point.”
The address led them to a small yellow house on a tree-lined street.
A bicycle lay on its side in the front yard.
There was a hand-painted wooden sign near the porch:
HAYES FAMILY DAYCARE
Sebastian’s heart began to pound.
Vincent’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, then looked back.
“The woman listed at the address is named Ruth Hayes. Madeline’s aunt.”
“Is she inside?”
“She was. But she left twenty minutes ago with a child.”
Sebastian’s face hardened.
“Where?”
Vincent hesitated.
“Her car was found abandoned near Highway 30.”
For the first time in years, Sebastian felt true fear.
Not fear of death.
Not fear of prison.
Fear that he was already too late.
They reached the highway ten minutes later.
Police lights flashed against the rain. A blue sedan sat crooked near the shoulder, driver’s door open. One front tire had been shredded by a spike strip.
An older woman sat in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket. Her silver hair was plastered to her face. A paramedic spoke gently to her.
Sebastian got out of the SUV.
Vincent moved with him.
“Stay close,” Vincent warned.
Ruth Hayes looked up as Sebastian approached.
Her eyes locked on his.
For a second, there was no recognition.
Then she saw Madeline’s features in his face—not the same features, but the history between them.
“You,” she whispered.
Sebastian stopped beside the ambulance.
“My name is Sebastian Cole.”
“I know who you are.”
Her voice was filled with hatred.
“You should have stayed away from him.”
Sebastian looked toward the empty road.
“Where is Eli?”
Ruth’s face crumpled.
“They took him.”
The world went silent.
“Who?”
“Two men in a black SUV. They forced me off the road.” Tears ran down her face. “They knew his name. They knew Madeline. They said Marcus sends his love.”
Vincent swore under his breath.
Sebastian’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
“Did they say where they were taking him?”
Ruth shook her head.
“No. But one of them said something about the old cannery.”
Vincent was already checking maps.
“There’s an abandoned fish cannery fifteen miles west. Near the river.”
Sebastian turned back to Ruth.
She looked at him with trembling anger.
“Madeline begged me not to contact you,” she said. “She said your family would destroy him.”
Sebastian lowered himself so he was at eye level with her.
“She was right to be afraid.”
Ruth’s expression shifted.
“But she was wrong about one thing,” he said.
“What?”
Sebastian looked toward the rain and the road disappearing into fog.
“No one is taking my son from me.”
He stood.
Vincent opened the SUV door.
“Sebastian, we need to move.”
Sebastian got inside, but before the vehicle pulled away, Ruth called after him.
“She made him a box.”
Sebastian turned.
“A box?”
“In his room. She told me if anything happened to her, and if you ever came… give it to him.”
Ruth reached beneath the ambulance blanket and handed Sebastian a small wooden box.
Engraved on the lid were two words.
For Eli.
Inside was a toy compass.
A photograph of Madeline holding a newborn baby.
And a voice recorder.
Sebastian pressed play.
Madeline’s voice filled the SUV.
Soft. Tired. Trembling.
“Eli, if you are listening to this, it means you’re old enough to ask about your father.”
Sebastian closed his eyes.
“He is not a monster,” Madeline said. “He is a man who made terrible choices because terrible people taught him they were the only choices he had.”
The recording clicked.
Then Madeline whispered one last thing.
“Your father loves fiercely, sweetheart. If he finds you, let him try.”
Sebastian opened his eyes.
“Drive,” he said.
The SUV shot through the rain toward the old cannery.
And at the far end of the highway, inside a black van speeding west, Eli Cole pressed his small face to the window and asked the man beside him one question.
“Is my dad coming?”
The man smiled without warmth.
May you like
“No one is coming for you.”
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