Chapter 6 - HAZEL’S RED SHOELACE
Griffin did not go alone.
He wanted to.
Of course he wanted to.
Hazel was his daughter and someone had taken her after he had known her less than a week.
Guilt makes intelligent people reckless.
Fortunately, I had experience with guilt.
“No.”
“Sloan.”
“If you walk onto that pier alone, you give them two hostages.”
“They asked for the drive.”
“They asked for you.”
His face hardened.
“If it gets Hazel back—”
“You think Richard spent eight years protecting a financial conspiracy so he could exchange a child politely for a USB stick?”
Griffin stopped.
Elena Cho and the FBI agent assigned to Thomas Vale’s evidence both agreed with me.
The federal government became formally involved once kidnapping entered the picture.
Caleb Moss disappeared from the security company’s records within minutes of Hazel vanishing.
His employment file was fake.
His references were manufactured.
His real name was Caleb Mercer.
Nephew of one of Richard’s longest-serving corporate attorneys.
Griffin had trusted a man positioned beside him for six years.
That discovery hurt him almost as much as the kidnapping.
Almost.
The FBI traced Hazel’s movement from traffic cameras.
Caleb’s SUV left the secure residence.
Crossed downtown.
Turned toward the waterfront.
Then vanished beneath an overpass.
No camera captured it afterward.
“Pier 41 might be misdirection,” Agent Dana Brooks said.
“Then where is she?” I demanded.
“We’re looking.”
Looking.
The most useless word ever spoken to a mother whose child is missing.
Iris sat upstairs with my mother and two agents.
She had not cried for an hour.
That scared me more.
I went to her.
She sat on the bed holding Hazel’s pillow.
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Hazel leaves clues.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“When we play spy.”
“What kind of clues?”
“Little things.”
My heart began beating faster.
“What little things?”
Iris stood.
“Come.”
She led me downstairs to the entrance where Caleb had taken Hazel.
Security footage showed Hazel wearing jeans, her yellow raincoat and red sneakers.
Iris pointed at the freeze-frame.
“Her shoelaces.”
“What about them?”
“Hazel double-knots.”
One shoe was untied.
I stared.
“She did that on purpose?”
“When we play spy, if someone follows us, we leave red things.”
The agents searched the courtyard.
Nothing.
Then one found a short piece of red lace beside the garage door.
Cut cleanly.
Another segment appeared near the vehicle exit.
Hazel had been leaving pieces of her shoelace.
My eight-year-old daughter had been kidnapped and had still remembered a game she invented with her sister.
I nearly collapsed.
Griffin caught my arm.
“We have a trail.”
Traffic officers searched the route from the residence.
A red fragment was found near an intersection.
Another near an abandoned service lane.
The trail led away from Pier 41.
East.
Industrial district.
An old warehouse property connected to Drake Neural Systems.
Griffin stared at the map.
“That facility closed fifteen years ago.”
“Who owns it?”
He checked.
His face changed.
“A Richard-controlled holding company.”
Agent Brooks stood.
“We move.”
Griffin was told to stay behind.
He refused.
So did I.
The compromise put us inside the mobile command vehicle three blocks away.
The waiting was unbearable.
Radio chatter.
Street maps.
Numbers I did not understand.
Then:
“Child located.”
My heart stopped.
“Repeat?”
“Female juvenile located. Alive.”
I grabbed Griffin.
He grabbed me.
Neither of us cared who saw.
“Condition?”
“Appears unharmed.”
I started crying.
Thirty-seven seconds later, Hazel appeared from the warehouse wrapped in an FBI jacket.
I was out of the vehicle before anyone could stop me.
“Mom!”
She ran.
I dropped to my knees.
She collided with me so hard we nearly fell.
I kissed her hair, face, hands.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“He yelled a lot.”
Griffin reached us.
Hazel looked at him.
“Dad.”
He closed his eyes.
Then held her.
Caleb Mercer had fled through a rear loading bay minutes before the agents entered.
But he had made a mistake.
Hazel had listened.
“What did he say?” Agent Brooks asked gently.
Hazel sat wrapped in blankets inside the ambulance.
“He kept talking on the phone.”
“To whom?”
“An old man.”
“Did he say a name?”
“No.”
“What did they talk about?”
“He said Griffin had the wrong drive.”
Everyone looked at one another.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Hazel continued.
“The old man said the important thing wasn’t the files.”
Griffin crouched.
“What was important?”
Hazel thought.
“The password.”
“What password?”
“He said Sloan knows it.”
My skin prickled.
“I don’t.”
Hazel shook her head.
“He said you do.”
“What exactly did he say?”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember.
“‘She’s had the password since college. She just doesn’t know what it opens.’”
Griffin looked at me.
College.
Thomas.
Richard.
Griffin.
What had I possessed since college?
I thought of old notebooks.
Drafting files.
Email accounts.
Then Griffin suddenly whispered, “Your bracelet.”
“What?”
“The silver bracelet I gave you.”
My wrist felt strangely naked.
I had not worn it for years.
The bracelet had a tiny rectangular charm engraved with coordinates.
I had always assumed they were the coordinates of the park where Griffin first kissed me.
He had told me they were.
“They weren’t?” I asked.
His face changed.
“No.”
“What were they?”
“My father gave me the numbers.”
“Why?”
“He told me to memorize them and never store them digitally.”
I stared.
“You engraved a secret code onto jewelry?”
“I was twenty-four and thought I was being romantic.”
“Where is the bracelet?”
My stomach dropped.
In a jewelry box.
At my house.
The same house I collapsed inside.
The same house that had been photographed by strangers since Griffin entered our lives.
The FBI arrived twenty minutes too late.
My house had been searched.
Nothing obviously stolen.
Except the bracelet.
Hazel had been rescued.
But Richard had what he wanted.
Then Griffin’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
Agent Brooks signaled for him to answer on speaker.
Richard Drake’s voice filled the room.
“Griffin.”
Griffin’s face hardened.
“Where’s Caleb?”
“Not my concern.”
“You ordered him to take my daughter.”
“Can you prove that?”
“We will.”
Richard sighed.
“You always were emotional.”
“And you always were arrogant.”
A pause.
Then Richard laughed softly.
“Tell Sloan thank you for keeping the bracelet safe.”
My blood turned cold.
“You have it.”
“Yes.”
“What does it open?”
“Something your father should have destroyed.”
Griffin looked at me.
“Then why do you need Sloan?”
Richard’s answer changed everything.
“Because Malcolm was clever.”
Another pause.
“The bracelet only contains half the password.”
I frowned.
“Where is the other half?”
Richard chuckled.
“You’ve been looking at it for eight years.”
The line went dead.
Griffin turned toward Hazel and Iris.
Then toward me.
Eight years.
December fourteenth.
Twins.
Two halves.
And suddenly I understood.
Their names.
Hazel.
Iris.
I had chosen them for reasons I thought were mine.
But both names had appeared in a list Griffin’s father once gave us as possible names for future children.
A joke during college.
A list Malcolm Drake had written.
Griffin whispered, “Their names are the second half.”
Richard had the bracelet.
But only we knew exactly how Malcolm intended the names to be used.
For the first time, Richard had something we needed.
May you like
And we had something he could never take by force.
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