Chapter 6 - Mile Marker Forty-Two
Mateo did not go alone.
He told Marisol’s voice he would.
That was different.
At eleven twenty the next night, he parked his truck half a mile from Mile Marker Forty-Two and walked the rest of the way through cold pine-scented darkness. Lucas Dean, an old friend from the sheriff’s major-crimes unit in the next county, followed at a distance with two plainclothes officers.
Mateo had told Lucas everything except the part where a dead man spoke through a teddy bear.
That sentence still sounded insane.
Instead, he gave him facts.
Hidden cameras.
Medication tampering.
A possible stalking operation.
A suspicious family trust.
A woman named Marisol Vega who might be connected.
Facts were enough to earn quiet backup.
The highway curved above a ravine.
Mile Marker Forty-Two stood beside an old maintenance road.
At exactly midnight, headlights appeared below.
A white SUV waited near a locked gate.
Mateo walked toward it.
The driver’s door opened.
A woman stepped out.
Late sixties.
Silver-streaked black hair.
Long camel coat.
Blue-stone ring on her left hand.
Elena’s face, sharpened by twenty years and stripped of softness.
Marisol.
“You look like Tomas,” she said.
Mateo stopped ten feet away.
“You were in my house.”
“Yes.”
“You changed my mother’s medication.”
“No.”
“Video says otherwise.”
“Video says a woman wearing this ring did.”
She lifted her hand.
“That is not the same thing.”
“Then who?”
Marisol smiled.
“You learned skepticism. Good.”
“Where is my father?”
She looked toward the ravine.
“Closer than you think.”
Mateo’s heart pounded.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Why hasn’t he come home?”
“Because your father is a coward.”
Mateo stepped forward.
“Careful.”
Marisol laughed.
“There it is. Rivera loyalty. The family disease.”
“What do you want?”
“The red toolbox.”
“You sent it to me.”
“I sent the box. I need what Tomas hid inside before Warren emptied it.”
“It was empty.”
“Then he beat me again.”
“Who?”
“Tomas.”
Mateo stared.
Marisol walked toward the guardrail.
“Your father always liked games. Layers inside layers. Evidence split between people who hate each other.”
“Why put a camera in my daughter’s bear?”
“I didn’t.”
“Who spoke through it?”
“Sometimes me.”
“Sometimes?”
She turned.
“Not every voice belonged to the same person.”
Mateo felt cold.
“Tomas?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“He has been watching Cedar for years.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know he’s alive?”
“Because he sends me photographs.”
She reached into her coat.
Mateo tensed.
She slowly produced an envelope and tossed it onto the road.
Inside were six photographs.
Marisol sleeping.
Warren Blake entering a courthouse.
Vanessa leaving Mateo’s house.
Elena standing outside a pharmacy.
Mateo carrying Sofia at a county fair.
The last photograph stopped him.
Tomas.
Older.
Gray beard.
Standing beside Mateo’s repair shop.
Date stamped eleven days earlier.
Mateo’s legs weakened.
“Where was this taken?”
“Ask your security system.”
“I don’t have exterior cameras.”
“Exactly.”
The thought of his father standing twenty feet from the building where Mateo worked every day made him furious.
“Why did you tell my mother to hold Sofia upside down?”
Marisol’s face changed.
“I didn’t.”
“You spoke through the bear.”
“I told Elena to check the mark.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I told her to look behind Sofia’s ear because Warren’s people use the mark to tag surveillance targets.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened.
“And somehow holding a child upside down made sense?”
“No.”
“Then why did she do it?”
Marisol looked genuinely disturbed.
“Elena has been getting worse.”
“Because someone switched her medication.”
“Or because she is sick.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Truth often is.”
A truck engine roared in the darkness.
Headlights exploded from the maintenance road.
Marisol shouted, “Down!”
Gunshots cracked.
Mateo hit the pavement.
The white SUV’s windows shattered.
Lucas’s officers returned fire from the tree line.
The attacking pickup accelerated past.
Mateo caught only the rear plate.
Vanessa’s father’s county.
Marisol crawled behind the guardrail.
Blood ran from her shoulder.
“You set me up,” Mateo said.
“No.”
“Then who knew?”
She grimaced.
“Someone always knows.”
Lucas reached them.
“Ambulance is coming.”
Marisol grabbed Mateo’s sleeve.
“No hospital.”
“You’ve been shot.”
“If they register my name, Warren finds me.”
Mateo leaned closer.
“Tell me where my father is.”
She whispered, “Ask Clara.”
Mateo froze.
“My wife?”
Marisol smiled through pain.
“She has known Tomas was alive for six months.”
Then she lost consciousness.
At the clinic, Marisol woke before dawn and immediately demanded her coat.
Lucas stopped her.
“You were shot.”
“I noticed.”
“You are not leaving.”
“I have spent thirty years leaving rooms before men decide what is best for me.”
Lucas folded his arms.
“I’m not deciding what is best. I’m preventing a hemorrhaging witness from wandering into a parking lot.”
Marisol stared at him.
“Annoying.”
“I get that.”
Mateo stood at the end of the bed.
“Why tell me Clara knew Dad?”
Marisol looked at him.
“Because it was true.”
“That is not enough.”
“No. It rarely is.”
“What did you want?”
“To break Tomas’s control.”
“By breaking my marriage?”
“Your marriage already contained the secret.”
Mateo hated the precision of that answer.
“Did you know Clara before?”
“No.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Once. Six months ago.”
“Where?”
“At the church sale.”
Mateo went still.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“You arranged the bear too?”
“No. Tomas did.”
“Then why were you there?”
“To see whether Clara took the key.”
“You knew the key was inside?”
“Yes.”
“So you and Dad were both using my family without telling me.”
Marisol’s expression hardened.
“We were trying to keep Cedar from getting the vault.”
“You keep saying Cedar like it is a hurricane.”
“It is worse. Hurricanes do not know your children’s names.”
Mateo leaned closer.
“Who shot you?”
“I did not see.”
“Guess.”
“Warren.”
“Anyone else?”
Marisol looked toward the window.
“Celia.”
“Who is Celia?”
Marisol hesitated.
“Vanessa’s mother.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Mateo almost laughed.
“Does anyone in this story stay dead?”
Marisol’s mouth twitched.
“Not the important ones.”
May you like
That answer would haunt him.
Mateo looked at Marisol’s bandaged shoulder and realized how quickly suspicion had replaced family instinct. A week earlier, he would have called an ambulance before asking a question. Now every wound seemed capable of being evidence, bait, or both. He hated what Cedar was teaching him.
