What Marcus Found

Brenda wasn’t escaping to Florida tonight. The deed in the trunk was real, but it didn’t mean she planned to leave. Her frantic packing had been a show, not a getaway in progress.

She intended to remain here.

She couldn’t run off with the money before she had access to it. First, she needed legal authority over Maya’s trust. To obtain that, she had to show that Dad had abandoned Maya for good—or make certain he could never come back.

And she needed Maya in her hands.

The thought twisted through me. I lurched backward inside the closet and struck my shoulder against the wall.

If Brenda meant to ask for custody in the morning, why had she sounded so desperate on the phone about Tyler burying Dad at the quarry tonight? Why all that panic over a missing key to a safe-deposit box that supposedly contained a will?

The pieces wouldn’t fit. Unless…

Unless that call had been staged.

Heavy steps shook the porch. The handle at the front door began to turn.

I pressed myself into the closet’s farthest corner, hauling a long coat over my head. My heart hammered hard enough to give me away, or so it seemed.

The door opened. A gust of winter air swept through the hall.

Tyler came inside.

He wasn’t gasping for breath. There was no crowbar in his hands, no dirt on him, no sign he’d fought his way through the cellar.

He slid the deadbolt into place, brushed the chill from his jacket, and headed toward the kitchen as if he’d just returned from an ordinary errand.

“Is it done?” Brenda asked. Her voice held no trace of fear.

“Yeah, all taken care of,” Tyler said with a laugh that bounced off the bare walls. He stopped at the island, picked up an apple left in the fruit bowl, and bit into it with a sharp crunch.

“The mechanic bought it?” Brenda asked.

“Every bit of it,” Tyler replied, chewing. “I didn’t go anywhere near the cellar entrance. I waited in the dark along the side of the house and watched him. He’s out in the bushes with a crowbar, guarding an empty cellar like a fool.”

The blood seemed to drain from my body. Empty.

“And her older brother?” Brenda asked. A note of amused cruelty crept into her voice.

Tyler took another bite. “Probably in here now, searching through your coat and congratulating himself on some brilliant robbery.”

I went still. The closet air felt suddenly thin, impossible to draw in.

They knew I was here.

They knew I’d hidden beneath the car and listened.

Tyler sighed. Then came the unmistakable tones of a phone dialing. A moment later, he switched on the speaker.

Understanding struck me low in the stomach. No one casually lays out a murder plan on speaker in an open driveway. No one announces a hostage’s location unless they want a listener to hear.

The fear in their conversation—the drug, the chains in the trunk, the order to go downstairs and break Dad’s hands—had all been an act.

They’d put on a show for one person: me.

They’d invented a crisis with a countdown, hoping I’d rush into danger instead of thinking. They wanted me away from somewhere safe, breaking into the house to chase a useless key. They also needed Marcus looking toward the cellar instead of the garage.

But what were they hiding?

“Did you get her?” Brenda asked. Her easy manner vanished, leaving a hard, businesslike edge.

“Sure did,” Tyler replied. He dropped the apple core into a trash bag. “When the brother came through the mudroom window and the mechanic went around the side, nobody was watching the garage. I walked straight to the office.”

“Was the door locked?”

“It was. But that padlock key I took from the old man’s ring yesterday opened it.” Tyler sounded pleased with himself.

My eyes dropped to the brass key still clenched in my hand. My fingers shook.

I raised it toward the thin strip of light under the closet door and rubbed away the grime with my thumb. A small mark showed on the metal.

It read Masterlock, not First National Bank.

The key wasn’t for a safe-deposit box. It belonged to the garage office.

The wallet and note Marcus had found hadn’t led us toward the truth. I saw now that they were bait, breadcrumbs that pulled us along the route Brenda and Tyler wanted us to take.

“Where’s the girl now?” Brenda asked. Packing tape tore with a harsh rip.

“Locked in the trunk of my car,” Tyler said casually. “She fought me, but I covered her with a blanket. She’s scared stiff. She won’t make a peep.”

Maya.

My six-year-old sister was shut inside Tyler’s freezing car trunk, hidden beneath a blanket. I had found the key and uncovered the trick too late: Maya had already been taken.