Chapter 3
Mark demanded to speak with me privately.
I refused.
“Noah stays.”
His jaw tightened.
“He doesn’t understand adult matters.”
I looked at my grandson.
“Apparently he understands enough that you’ve been starving him for information.”
“That is not what happened.”
Noah stopped eating.
Fear returned to his face.
I looked at Mark.
“Leave.”
“Dad—”
“Leave.”
He did.
That obedience would have impressed me once.
Now it disgusted me.
He could control himself when I spoke.
He simply chose not to when Noah cried.
I returned to the drawing.
“Where is Mommy’s little cabin?”
Noah pointed toward the mountain outside.
“Trees.”
Helpful.
Colorado contained several.
“Did you go there?”
He nodded.
“With Mommy?”
“Yes.”
“Daddy?”
His answer came immediately.
“No.”
Interesting.
Anna had taken Noah somewhere Mark did not know.
“What did Mommy do there?”
Noah thought.
“She put box sleepy.”
I almost smiled despite everything.
“Put a box to sleep?”
He nodded confidently.
“Under floor.”
There.
A hidden box beneath a cabin floor.
Mark and Claudia had been trying to make a toddler remember where.
Noah reached for more soup.
I let him eat.
No interrogation.
No forcing memory.
If the box mattered, I could find it without turning him into another tool.
I called my security chief, Dominic Hale.
“Anna ever use a cabin near this lodge?”
He thought.
“There’s an old caretaker cabin about two miles north.”
“Who owns it?”
“You.”
Of course.
My father built it decades ago.
Nobody used it now.
Mark would know that.
Unless Anna had reached it through the old trail.
I looked toward the door.
That explained Claudia’s desperation.
Noah’s picture had put the cabin beside the lodge.
A child’s drawing was enough for me to connect what they could not force from him.
I gave Dominic one instruction.
“Go there.”
Noah heard me.
His spoon stopped.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let Daddy get Mommy box.”
My throat tightened.
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
May you like
That promise carried more weight than anything said at my birthday table.
Because whatever Anna hid, she had trusted a two-year-old to remember me before she trusted her husband.
