Chapter 2 - The Ghost of David Vance
By ten o’clock that night, Oliver was asleep. The boy had collapsed from sheer emotional exhaustion, his small body curled into a tight comma under the comforter, clutching the threadbare stuffed bear against his chest. I had sat beside his bed until his breathing slowed into a steady, rhythmic rasp, brushing his wild brown curls away from a forehead that was undeniably Vance.
Downstairs in the kitchen, the atmosphere was grim. A pot of black coffee sat brewing, the bitter aroma filling the room, competing with the chill leaking through the back patio door. Spread across the quartz kitchen island were the fragments of a vanished life.
My brother's pocket watch sat in the center. Next to it was the state adoption folder: *Ward of the State: Oliver Vance Roe. Found abandoned near Highway 97, Oregon, November 2020.*
“Roe,” Julian murmured, leaning against the counter, a mug untouched in his hand. “They gave him a Jane Doe variation because he wouldn’t give them a last name. Or because someone erased it.”
“Brenda Gable knew,” I said, pacing the length of the hardwood floor. My nerves were strung so tight I felt like I was humming. “She had to know. You don't just drop an eight-year-old child off with a black trash bag and say 'Good luck' when he’s the biological nephew of the adoptive mother. That violates every federal conflict-of-interest protocol in Child Protective Services!”
“Unless she wasn't following CPS protocols,” Julian pointed out. “Unless she was following David’s.”
I stopped pacing. David had been an investigative journalist for the *Chicago Chronicle*. In the months leading up to his disappearance in 2012, he had grown paranoid. He had stopped using his credit cards, bought burner phones, and repeatedly told me that if anything ever happened to him, I shouldn't look for him because looking would put a target on my back. I had thought he was experiencing a manic episode. The police had treated it as a voluntary disappearance—a burnt-out reporter walking away from his debts and stress.
We had all failed him.
I picked up my phone. My thumb scrolled through contacts until I reached a name I hadn’t dialed in seven years: *Detective Marcus Miller.*
Miller was the lead investigator on David’s missing persons case. He had retired five years ago, thoroughly disgusted with the department’s indifference toward cold cases.
Julian stepped forward. “Ev, wait. It’s past ten-thirty.”
“I don’t care if it’s three in the morning,” I said, hitting dial.
The phone rang four times. Then a gravelly, sleep-roughened voice answered. “Miller.”
“Detective Miller. It’s Evelyn Vance.”
A long pause hung on the line. The sound of shifting bedsheets, then the sharp click of a lighter. Miller took a slow drag before answering. “Evelyn. God Almighty. Did someone find remains?”
“No,” I said, my voice trembling despite my best efforts. “Someone found his son.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line. No cough, no breathing. Just the white noise of a cellular connection spanning hundreds of miles.
“Miller?” I pressed. “Are you there?”
“Where are you right now, Evelyn?” Miller’s voice had lost every trace of sleep. It was cold, sharp, and laced with pure adrenaline.
“I’m in my kitchen. In Oak Creek.”
“Who is with you?”
“Julian. And Oliver. The boy.”
“Lock your doors,” Miller said instantly. “Draw every blind in that house right now.”
The hair on my arms stood on end. Julian caught my eye and immediately set his mug down, reading the sheer terror on my face.
“Miller, what are you talking about?” I demanded. “Oliver is eight years old! He’s safe in bed upstairs!”
“You listen to me very carefully, Evelyn,” Miller whispered, his voice intense. “Twelve years ago, David wasn't working on a story about municipal graft. He stumbled into a private network—a syndicate calling themselves the Obsidian Trust. Real estate moguls, judges, human traffickers moving children and laundered capital through shell corporations out of the Pacific Northwest. David stole a ledger. A physical hard drive containing offshore routing numbers and unredacted names.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What does that have to do with Oliver?”
“David didn't run away to save his career, Evelyn. He ran away because he fell in love with a woman named Sarah Lin—one of the key witnesses he pulled out of an Obsidian safe house. They went completely off the grid. When Sarah died giving birth, David stayed hidden in the woods to protect that baby. The Obsidian Trust spent twelve years and millions of dollars hunting for that drive.”
Miller took a ragged breath.
“If David sent Oliver to you, it means they found him. And it means whatever David stole twelve years ago… is no longer in the woods. It’s with the boy.”
A sudden, sharp metallic click echoed from the back patio.
Julian froze. He turned his head slowly toward the sliding glass door.
The security motion lights in the backyard had just snapped on, bathing the lawn in harsh, blinding halogen white.
May you like
Standing on the wooden deck, less than ten feet from where we stood, was a man dressed in a dark tactical jacket, staring directly through the glass at the pocket watch sitting on our kitchen counter.
***
