Chapter 5 - The Place He Went to Hide
The police moved us before sunrise.
By then, Jason’s message had been traced to a burner phone that had been discarded near the hotel parking lot. He wanted us frightened. He wanted us looking over our shoulders instead of looking for him.
But Detective Alvarez had another theory.
“He’s not just running,” she told me. “He’s collecting what he needs to start over.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means money, documents, leverage. He has a plan.”
The motel outside town was searched that afternoon.
Inside Room 118, police found clothes, canned food, maps, two passports with different names, and a wall covered with newspaper clippings about missing women.
One photo stopped me cold.
Danielle Brooks.
The woman whose wallet had been found in the pool.
She was alive in the picture.
Standing beside Jason.
Smiling nervously.
Behind the photo, written in black marker, were the words:
“She knows where the ledger is.”
The ledger turned out to be something Sarah had hidden without understanding its value.
Before Jason had taken control of her life, she had found a notebook tucked inside his toolbox. It listed dates, names, banks, addresses, and coded payments. She thought it was related to his construction business.
When she became afraid of him, she hid it.
Jason never found it.
Until now, she said.
“Where is it?” Detective Alvarez asked her.
Sarah looked at me.
Then at the floor.
“In the only place he never checked,” she said.
“My mother’s old cabin.”
The cabin sat two hours north of town near a lake nobody visited after summer. Sarah’s mother had died years earlier. The place had been empty ever since.
Jason knew about it.
Of course he did.
He knew everything.
Police prepared a quiet operation. They didn’t want to storm the cabin blindly if Danielle—or anyone else—was inside. A drone sweep showed one vehicle parked behind the building. Heat signatures suggested at least two people.
I was told to stay at the command post.
I agreed.
For exactly twelve minutes.
Then I heard a voice through one of the radios.
“Possible child item located.”
Every part of me went cold.
I ran before anyone could stop me.
Detective Alvarez caught me near the tree line.
“Michael, no.”
“Emily is with officers.”
“I know.”
“Then why did they say child item?”
She looked toward the cabin.
“We found one of Emily’s drawings taped in the window.”
Jason wanted me there.
He had known I would come.
That realization should have made me stop.
Instead, it made me more determined.
I stood with Alvarez behind a row of pine trees as officers surrounded the cabin. The lake beyond it was black under the evening sky.
A loudspeaker crackled.
“Jason Reed, this is the police. Exit the cabin with your hands visible.”
Nothing.
Then a woman screamed inside.
Sarah.
She had insisted on coming with detectives to identify the ledger’s hiding place. Somehow, during the confusion at the hospital transfer, Jason’s people—or Jason himself—had intercepted her transport.
He had taken her.
A shape appeared at the cabin window.
Jason stood behind Sarah, one arm around her neck, the other holding something metallic against her side.
“You want the ledger?” he shouted. “Bring Carter out here.”
Alvarez turned to me.
“You stay down.”
Jason laughed from inside.
“Michael! You always wanted to be the hero. Come be one.”
I looked at Sarah.
She was terrified.
But she shook her head.
No.
Don’t come.
Then Jason pulled her away from the window.
A gunshot cracked through the air.
Everyone dropped.
The cabin door burst open.
Jason ran toward the lake, dragging Sarah with him.
Officers pursued.
I heard Alvarez shout my name, but I was already moving.
The shoreline was muddy and slick. Jason slipped once, lost his balance, and Sarah broke free.
She ran toward me.
I caught her.
Then Jason turned.
His gun was raised.
For one suspended second, everything became still.
The lake.
The trees.
Sarah sobbing against my chest.
Jason’s eyes fixed on mine.
Then Detective Alvarez stepped from behind a boat shed.
“Drop it!”
Jason fired.
Alvarez fired back.
Jason fell into the mud at the water’s edge.
The gun slid from his hand.
He was alive.
Barely conscious.
But alive enough to be arrested.
As officers cuffed him, he looked at Sarah and smiled.
“You think this ends with me?”
Sarah’s face drained of color.
Then she whispered, “No.”
She looked at Detective Alvarez.
May you like
“It ends with the ledger.”
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