Chapter 4 - THE MISSING EIGHT MINUTES
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The anonymous message glowed against Ava's palm as dawn light spread over Chicago. Ortiz photographed it immediately, then asked Ava to silence the phone without deleting anything.
"Whoever sent that knows about Miles," Ava said. The detective nodded. "Which means we protect him first, and we preserve what he has before somebody else reaches it."
A patrol car was dispatched to the production studio. Ava rode with Ortiz, while another officer arranged protection for Sarah, Noah, and Lila at the hospital.
Miles Chen opened the studio door before they knocked. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and was clutching a mug of cold coffee he appeared to have forgotten.
"I didn't watch it all," he said. "When the feed disappeared, I thought the connection had failed. Then someone tried to access the backup server using an administrator account."
He led them into a cramped editing room lined with monitor screens. The showroom's white displays filled the central monitor, frozen at a moment just before closing.
Miles explained that he had configured the recorder to store short encrypted segments locally before uploading them. A disconnected camera therefore could not erase the footage already saved.
"The last eight minutes are complete," he said. "There's also a second audio track from the microphone beside the stage. It picked up more than I expected."
Ortiz contacted a forensic examiner and directed Miles to stop interacting with the files. They documented the device, captured identifying information, and prepared a verified copy for review.
Ava sat behind Ortiz as the recording began. The wide camera showed the red supercar, the freestanding logo, and the glossy stretch of black marble where the violence had unfolded.
At first, Victor appeared alone beside the trunk. Then he opened it, reached inside, and pushed Noah deeper into the compartment. The boy's small shoes flashed against the red paint.
Ava gripped the chair. She had heard the knocks, but until now she had not seen the terrifying seconds that came before her arrival.
The recording captured the trunk slam. Victor's threat followed through the stage microphone, rough and unmistakable. In the editing room, nobody moved until his voice had faded.
Then Ava entered the frame, running toward the sound. She watched herself pull Noah out, shelter him, and stand between him and Victor as the businessman approached.
His first slap looked uglier without the confusion of adrenaline. The second swing was clear too, followed by the defensive movement that sent him sliding over the car's hood.
The falling display sign filled the monitor with white glare. When it settled, the black coupe stood in the background, and a faint tapping appeared on the secondary audio track.
"That proves both rescues," Ava whispered. Ortiz did not answer immediately. Her attention was fixed on a detail near the service hallway, twenty seconds before Victor attacked.
A uniformed man had crossed the frame carrying a flat black case. Grant Pike. He paused beneath the security monitor, removed a memory module, and disappeared upstairs.
"Security's official recording was deliberately interrupted," Ortiz said. "But this gives us a precise time to compare with the other evidence. We need that equipment case."
The forensic examiner stored the recording under an evidence identifier. For the first time since leaving the showroom, Ava felt the fragile beginning of relief beneath her exhaustion.
That relief lasted until Ortiz's phone rang. An officer at the hospital reported that a man wearing an emergency-services jacket had tried to gain access to the children's treatment rooms.
Staff had challenged him. He produced false credentials, then fled before police could stop him. A nurse remembered his vehicle: a silver utility sedan without hospital markings.
Ava stood so abruptly the chair scraped the floor. Ortiz raised a hand. "The children are secure now. The entrances are controlled, and the families are being moved."
"He was checking whether they could still be reached," Ava said. Ortiz looked at her steadily. "Maybe. We cannot assume it was the same person, but we're treating it seriously."
At the hospital, Sarah met them in a private consultation room. Noah had finally fallen asleep against a pillow, holding a paper dinosaur a nurse had made from a green towel.
Lila remained awake. She was drawing rows of cars on a sheet of paper, each one surrounded by little circles that Ava at first mistook for balloons.
"They're lights," Lila explained when Ava asked. "At the place where they took my mom, there were green lights over the doors. They looked like stars."
Sarah turned sharply. "The old shipping terminal," she said. "Victor bought land near Pier Nine under a company called Harbor Meridian. Green signal lamps hang over the loading bays."
Ortiz asked where Sarah had found the name. Sarah drew a slow breath and explained that Harbor Meridian appeared repeatedly in the foundation's transfer records as a transportation subcontractor.
"I kept copies," she said. "Not on my work laptop. There's a storage device hidden in a place Victor doesn't know about. I was afraid to tell anyone."
The detective did not press her in front of the children. Instead, she arranged a separate interview while Ava sat beside Lila, watching the little girl fill the page with green stars.
"Did your mother tell you stories?" Ava asked. Lila nodded. "She said brave people can feel scared. They just don't let scared decide everything."
Ava thought of Jasmine, somewhere beyond the guarded hospital doors, trying to hold on to that same conviction while her daughter waited for her to return.
Sarah later explained that the drive was sealed inside a hollow base of a donated science trophy in her apartment. She had intended to hand it over the night the children vanished.
Investigators recovered the device under warrant. Its folders contained financial statements, duplicate shipping manifests, and photographs of cars listed as charitable donations that had never reached a school.
One folder held a scanned agreement requiring Sarah to retract all allegations. Another included a photograph of Jasmine speaking with a man whose face was partially hidden behind a warehouse door.
The man wore a distinctive ring, a silver square set with dark blue stone. Ava recognized it from the showroom recording: Grant Pike had worn the same ring.
Ortiz sent officers to the terminal and requested additional investigators. As she left, she told Ava the evidence had become much bigger than a single attack in an expensive building.
That evening, Ava returned home to find a small padded envelope outside her apartment door. No delivery service had signed for it, and there was no return address.
Inside lay a printed still from the showroom camera. Someone had circled Ava's face in black ink. Beneath it were five words: YOU OPENED THE WRONG TRUNK.
May you like
Ava photographed the envelope without touching the contents again. Then she called Ortiz, turned on every light in her apartment, and refused to let fear persuade her into silence.
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