Chapter 6 - House Rules
The apartment door was unlocked when Mark returned.
He had locked it before leaving. He knew because he had tested the handle twice, then watched Leo test it a third time before going downstairs to Mrs. Alvarez.
Mark did not enter. He stepped back and drew his service flashlight from his jacket. It was not a weapon, but the heavy metal body fit his hand well enough.
“Leo?”
No answer.
His phone vibrated.
DAD, I’M WITH MRS. ALVAREZ. SHE SAID YOU’RE NOT HOME.
Mark let out a breath. He sent back, “Stay there. Do not come upstairs.”
He opened the door with the flashlight raised. Nothing moved. The apartment looked ordinary until he noticed the kitchen chair pulled away from the table and the cabinet beneath the sink hanging open.
The intruder had not searched randomly. The desk drawers were untouched. The television remained on. Sara’s blue mug sat where it always did.
The old bicycle, however, had been removed from the storage room and placed in the center of the living room.
The bent front wheel pointed toward the window.
Mark crouched beside it. A thin black thread was caught in the spokes. He touched it with a tissue and saw that it was not thread but a fiber from a glove.
He called Ruiz.
“Get Leo somewhere secure,” she said.
“He’s with a neighbor.”
“Not secure enough.”
“I need to know what they were looking for.”
“You need to leave the apartment.”
“They moved the bike.”
“Then they wanted you to know they had been there.”
Leo came upstairs despite being told not to. “Dad?”
Mark turned sharply. “I said stay downstairs.”
Leo flinched. “I was worried.”
The anger left Mark as quickly as it had arrived.
“I’m sorry.”
“Did they hurt anything?”
“No.”
“They moved my bike.”
“I know.”
Leo looked at the bicycle. “Why would someone want a broken bike?”
Mark thought of the envelope and its message. He still has something that doesn’t belong to him.
“Maybe they think it has something hidden in it.”
Leo’s face changed.
“What?” Mark asked.
“The light.”
“What about it?”
“It made a noise after I fell.”
Mark crouched. “What kind of noise?”
“Like a tiny beep. Then it stopped.”
He removed the light from the handlebar and opened the casing again. Beneath the battery was a shallow compartment sealed with clear tape. He had missed it because the compartment was molded into the plastic and matched the casing.
Inside was a black memory card no larger than a fingernail.
Leo backed away. “I didn’t put that there.”
“I know.”
“Did Mom?”
Mark had no answer.
He took the card to an electronics store owned by a retired network engineer named Simon Park. Simon examined it under a magnifying lamp.
“It’s encrypted,” he said. “But the casing is old. Four or five years, maybe.”
“Can you open it?”
“Not here.”
“Where, then?”
Simon looked at him. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“Why would somebody hide a card in a child’s bike light and wait years for it to be found?”
Mark thought of Sara’s photograph. Mercer, before the rain.
“Maybe they didn’t wait,” he said. “Maybe they expected somebody else to find it.”
That evening, Mark took Leo to his sister Nina’s house across the river. Nina hugged Leo, then held Mark at arm’s length.
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“I know.”
Nina had been angry with Mark since Sara’s death, not because she blamed him, but because he had turned grief into a locked room and refused to let anyone enter.
“You should tell me what’s happening,” she said.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“You have a ten-year-old who was nearly run over and a missing coworker. Stop protecting adults from information.”
Mark told her everything.
When he finished, Nina sat beside Leo on the couch. “Your mother kept notes,” she said.
Leo looked up. “About cameras?”
“About everything. She wrote in the margins of cookbooks, on receipts, in the backs of calendars.”
Mark frowned. “You knew?”
“She asked me to hold a box if anything happened to her.”
“Where is it?”
Nina’s eyes hardened. “You never asked.”
May you like
She went to the basement and returned with a dented metal cash box.
On its lid, Sara had drawn a thin silver line from one corner to the other.
