Chapter 2 - THE MAN UNDER THE FLOOR
Aaron Foster was alive.
Barely.
The firefighters removed the blue fishing boat using the yard’s hydraulic dolly while Detective Ortiz and two deputies pulled up the plywood panel beneath it.
A narrow concrete inspection pit appeared under the floor.
Marcus hadn’t seen it since he was a teenager.
His father had used the pit decades earlier to access boat hulls from underneath.
When the boatyard had been remodeled, Marcus assumed it had been filled.
Instead, someone had hidden it.
Someone who knew the property well enough to know it existed.
At the bottom lay Aaron Foster.
His ankles were bound.
His hands were secured behind him with plastic restraints.
A strip of gray tape covered his mouth.
His face was bruised, but his chest moved.
“EMS!” Ortiz shouted.
Marcus stood outside with Caleb as rescuers lifted Aaron from the pit.
The boy saw his father and made a sound Marcus would remember for the rest of his life.
Not a scream.
Not quite a cry.
A broken little gasp.
“Daddy.”
Aaron’s eyes opened.
They searched wildly until they found Caleb.
His entire expression collapsed.
The paramedic pulled the tape from his mouth.
“Caleb,” Aaron whispered.
The boy tried to run forward.
Marcus caught him gently.
“Give them a second.”
“That’s my daddy!”
“I know.”
“He needs me.”
Marcus understood.
He let Caleb go when the paramedic nodded.
Caleb ran to the stretcher and pressed both hands against his father’s arm.
Aaron started crying.
It was quiet crying.
The kind grown men often tried to hide.
“I’m sorry,” Aaron whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Caleb shook his head.
“Maya said you didn’t leave.”
“No.”
“Vanessa said you didn’t want us anymore.”
Aaron’s face changed.
Even weak and half-conscious, anger cut through the exhaustion.
“I would never leave you.”
Caleb climbed as close as the paramedic allowed.
“I knew.”
Marcus looked away.
He suddenly hated Vanessa Foster with a clarity that surprised him.
Not merely for the shovel.
Not even for trapping Maya.
For making a five-year-old believe his father had chosen to disappear.
Aaron was loaded into the second ambulance.
Maya was already being taken to St. Anne’s Medical Center.
Caleb would travel with his father under police supervision.
Before the ambulance doors closed, Aaron grabbed Ortiz’s wrist.
“There’s another man.”
The detective leaned closer.
“What man?”
Aaron struggled to speak.
“Cole.”
“Cole who?”
“Danner.”
Ortiz’s expression sharpened.
Marcus knew that name.
Cole Danner had visited the boatyard twice during the previous month with Aaron.
Tall.
Forties.
Expensive boots.
Always talking into his phone.
Aaron’s business partner.
“He helped her,” Aaron whispered. “Don’t trust—”
His eyes rolled back.
The monitor alarm accelerated.
The paramedics pushed Ortiz away.
“Sir, stay with me.”
Doors slammed.
The ambulance left.
Ortiz turned toward Marcus.
“You know Cole Danner?”
“A little.”
“Tell me.”
Marcus rubbed the back of his throbbing head.
“He and Aaron bought fuel here. Rented slips sometimes. Aaron owns Foster Land and Excavation. Cole handles contracts.”
“When were they last here?”
“Together? Maybe three weeks ago.”
“Vanessa?”
Marcus shook his head.
“I’d seen her around town, but never here.”
Ortiz looked toward the inspection pit.
“Then somebody told her about that hole.”
Marcus followed her gaze.
Only a handful of people knew it existed.
Marcus.
His late father.
Several old employees.
And—
He stopped.
Ortiz noticed.
“What?”
“Aaron.”
“How?”
“I showed it to him.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
The same visit.
Marcus remembered Aaron standing beside the blue boat while Cole took a call outside.
Aaron had noticed a slight seam between two floorboards.
He asked what it was.
Marcus explained the history.
A useless old inspection pit.
At least Marcus thought it was useless.
Ortiz wrote something in her notebook.
“So Aaron knew.”
“And Cole could’ve heard us.”
“Which means the location may not have been random.”
Marcus looked back toward the lake.
Vanessa had escaped by boat.
Police marine units were already searching.
But the lake covered more than twenty square miles and connected to two narrow rivers.
She could have abandoned the skiff anywhere.
“Why bring the kids here?” Marcus asked.
Ortiz studied him.
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
The answer began emerging two hours later.
Marcus was sitting in an emergency room treatment bay while a doctor closed the cut near his hairline with six stitches.
Detective Ortiz entered without knocking.
“You should be resting.”
“You should find Vanessa.”
“We’re trying.”
“Try harder.”
Ortiz raised an eyebrow.
Marcus sighed.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No.”
She pulled a chair closer.
“We recovered Aaron’s truck.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned behind a closed grocery store nine miles north.”
“Vanessa?”
“No sign of her.”
“What about Cole?”
“Gone.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Gone how?”
“His house is empty. Closet cleared. Passport missing. Company vehicle abandoned.”
“So they planned this.”
“Looks that way.”
She paused.
“And we found something else.”
Ortiz took out her phone.
A photograph showed the cargo area inside Aaron’s truck.
Rope.
Duct tape.
A child’s backpack.
Two orange life jackets.
And a large plastic gas container.
Marcus stared at the picture.
“What was the gas for?”
“That’s what worries me.”
Ortiz swiped.
Another photograph appeared.
A handwritten receipt.
North Shore Marine.
Marcus’s boatyard.
Date: three days earlier.
Purchase: twenty gallons of gasoline.
Customer signature: Marcus Hale.
Marcus felt the room suddenly become very quiet.
“That’s not my signature.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because we compared it to the forms you signed today.”
Marcus looked closely.
The forgery was good.
Not perfect.
But good enough to fool somebody at first glance.
“They were setting me up.”
Ortiz nodded.
“That possibility has occurred to me.”
“For what?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Marcus thought about the hidden pit.
His boatyard.
The gasoline.
Aaron bound beneath his floor.
Two children imprisoned on his property.
If Maya had drowned and Caleb had died inside the locked shed—
Marcus felt cold.
“It would’ve looked like I did it.”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
Ortiz didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
Someone had deliberately chosen Marcus’s property.
Someone had forged his signature.
Someone wanted investigators looking at him instead of somewhere else.
A nurse opened the curtain.
“Mr. Hale?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a little boy outside asking for you.”
Marcus stood.
Caleb entered wearing hospital pajamas several sizes too big.
A deputy followed.
“How’s Maya?”
“Doctor says she’s warming up,” Caleb said.
“And your dad?”
“Sleeping.”
The boy looked at Ortiz, then at Marcus.
“I remembered something.”
Ortiz crouched.
“What?”
“Before Vanessa put me in the shed, she was yelling at Cole.”
Marcus and Ortiz exchanged a look.
“What did she say?” Ortiz asked.
Caleb frowned, trying to remember.
“She said Daddy ruined everything because he changed something.”
“Changed what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think carefully.”
Caleb squeezed his fingers together.
“She said, ‘You said the papers were signed.’”
Ortiz’s eyes sharpened.
“What did Cole say?”
“He said Daddy changed it after Mommy died.”
Marcus saw Ortiz go completely still.
“Your mommy?”
“My real mommy.”
“What was her name?”
“Rachel.”
Marcus knew that name too.
Rachel Foster had died three years earlier in what everyone around Lake Briar called a tragic accident.
Her car had gone through a guardrail during heavy rain.
Aaron had nearly stopped functioning afterward.
Vanessa entered his life eleven months later.
Caleb kept talking.
“Then Vanessa said something about us.”
“What?” Ortiz asked.
Caleb looked ashamed.
“I’m not supposed to say bad words.”
“It’s okay right now.”
“She said, ‘Those damn kids get everything.’”
Marcus felt his stomach tighten.
Ortiz asked carefully, “Everything what?”
Caleb shrugged.
Then Maya’s weak voice came from the doorway.
“The lake house.”
Everyone turned.
Maya stood holding a nurse’s hand.
A blanket wrapped her shoulders.
“Maya, you should be in bed,” Marcus said.
“I told them I needed Caleb.”
Her brother immediately hugged her.
Ortiz waited.
“What lake house?”
Maya looked at her.
“The big one Grandma left Mommy.”
Aaron had never owned a lake house that Marcus knew about.
Ortiz asked, “Where is it?”
“Other side of the lake.”
“What does it have to do with Vanessa?”
Maya swallowed.
“She wanted Daddy to sell it.”
Marcus frowned.
“Why?”
“Daddy said he couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it belongs to us.”
Caleb nodded.
“Me and Maya.”
Ortiz stood slowly.
“How much is that property worth?”
Marcus knew Lake Briar real estate.
Especially the undeveloped eastern shoreline.
His face changed.
“If it’s where I think it is?”
Ortiz looked at him.
“How much?”
“Several million.”
Maya hugged the blanket closer.
“Daddy said somebody wanted to build a hotel.”
Marcus and Ortiz exchanged another look.
Now there was motive.
But Maya wasn’t finished.
“Daddy found something at the lake house last week.”
“What?” Ortiz asked.
“A box Mommy hid.”
Marcus waited.
“What was inside?”
“I don’t know.”
Maya’s eyes moved toward the window.
“He saw it.”
“Who?”
“Cole.”
Ortiz grabbed her radio.
“Get units to the Foster lake property now.”
A deputy responded.
Then Maya said something that stopped Ortiz halfway to the door.
“Vanessa already took the box.”
Ortiz turned.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Where did she take it?”
Maya looked directly at Marcus.
“To his boatyard.”
Marcus frowned.
“My boatyard?”
Maya nodded.
“She said nobody would ever look inside the red boat.”
Marcus stopped breathing.
There was only one red boat on his property.
An abandoned 1968 Chris-Craft cruiser his father had bought forty years earlier.
It hadn’t moved in decades.
It sat inside Warehouse Two.
And suddenly Marcus remembered something else.
The Chris-Craft had a false compartment beneath its aft bench.
His father used to hide emergency cash there when Marcus was young.
No one should have known that.
No one except family.
Marcus looked at Detective Ortiz.
“She knows too much about my property.”
Ortiz’s expression darkened.
“Then maybe Vanessa didn’t choose you randomly.”
Marcus stared at her.
A thought he did not want entered his mind.
“My father died seven years ago.”
Ortiz waited.
Marcus continued.
“But Vanessa’s maiden name was Bell.”
“So?”
“My father had a girlfriend after my mother died.”
Ortiz went still.
Marcus whispered the name from a memory he hadn’t touched in years.
“Diane Bell.”
Maya looked confused.
Marcus barely heard her.
Because Diane Bell had disappeared from his father’s life after a brutal argument.
And she had a teenage daughter.
A girl Marcus had met only twice.
May you like
A girl with pale hair and green eyes.
A girl named Vanessa.
