Chapter 4 - Eleven Missing Minutes
Fletcher Boon had a daughter named Hallie.
Twenty-three years old.
Graduate student at Columbia.
According to her father, she had gone to Montreal three days earlier with two friends.
According to her phone, she was still in New York.
That was the first thing Dominic's people discovered.
The second was worse.
Hallie's phone had not moved from the same location in thirty-six hours.
An industrial block near Yonkers.
Fletcher sat in his office with both hands over his face.
“I was told she was being watched.”
Dominic stood near the window.
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
“That's becoming a very expensive answer.”
“I swear to God.”
Dominic turned.
“Don't swear to anyone. Give me facts.”
Fletcher looked twenty years older than he had an hour before.
“It started six days ago. Someone called my private number.”
“Male?”
“Voice altered.”
“What did they know?”
“Everything.”
“Be specific.”
“They knew Hallie's address. Her class schedule. Her roommate's name. They sent me a photograph of her walking from the subway.”
His voice broke.
“They told me the dog had to die.”
Lena sat on the floor outside isolation C.
The outer door was now open twelve inches.
Rook had stopped throwing himself against the barrier after the remote was destroyed.
He lay with his enormous head resting near Lena's jacket.
Not relaxed.
Not safe.
But no longer being tortured every time someone approached.
Dr. Sato had given him water through a long rubber trough without touching him.
He drank.
Three cups.
The first water, apparently, he'd willingly taken in days.
Lena listened to Fletcher from the hallway.
“Why Rook?” Dominic asked.
“I asked.”
“And?”
“They said it wasn't my concern.”
“You installed the equipment.”
“They sent a technician.”
“You allowed him into a secure medical wing.”
“They had Hallie!”
Dominic didn't flinch.
“So instead of calling me, you helped torture an animal.”
Fletcher stood abruptly.
“You think I don't know that?”
His voice cracked.
“You think I haven't watched what happened every day?”
Dominic's men shifted.
Fletcher didn't care anymore.
“They told me if the dog survived past Friday, Hallie would disappear. They sent videos of her apartment. Photographs of her mother’s grave. They knew where I bought coffee.”
He looked toward isolation C.
“I told myself he was only a dog.”
The words hung there.
Then Fletcher started crying.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
He simply sank into his chair as something inside him gave way.
“I told myself that over and over.”
Lena looked at Rook.
One pale eye faced the wrong direction.
The massive dog didn't know anyone was confessing.
He only knew the pain had stopped.
For now.
Dominic's voice softened almost imperceptibly.
“Give my people everything.”
Fletcher nodded.
“Every number. Every message. Every photograph.”
“Yes.”
“Then we find Hallie.”
Fletcher looked up.
“You'll help her?”
Dominic's expression did not change.
“You should have asked me six days ago.”
One of Dominic's men entered.
“Mr. Vale.”
“What?”
“We found something on Lakewood's exterior cameras.”
Milo followed him holding his tablet.
Dominic glanced at the clerk.
“Milo found it.”
Milo nearly dropped the device.
“I—I just noticed the time stamps.”
“Show me.”
They gathered around the tablet.
Lena stayed with Rook but could see the screen from where she sat.
Footage showed the Lakewood parking lot eight days earlier.
Rain.
2:13 a.m.
A white utility van entered.
No markings.
It stopped at the emergency intake entrance.
Two men got out.
The video skipped.
Suddenly it was 2:24.
The van was gone.
Milo rewound it.
“Eleven minutes.”
Dominic frowned.
“What?”
“The file isn't corrupted. Eleven minutes were removed.”
“Can you recover them?”
“I don't know.”
“Try.”
Milo tapped through menus.
Dr. Sato looked over his shoulder.
“How did Rook enter the system?”
Milo answered.
“Anonymous emergency drop.”
“Who signed intake?”
“I did.”
Everyone looked at him.
He swallowed.
“I was working overnight.”
“What did you see?” Dominic asked.
“A man.”
“Describe him.”
“I barely saw him.”
“Try.”
“Baseball cap. Raincoat. Maybe fifty? He said he'd found the dog on Route 9.”
“Did he give identification?”
“No.”
“And you accepted that?”
Milo's face reddened.
“He brought in a dying blind dog at two in the morning. I wasn't thinking about paperwork.”
“What condition was Rook in?”
Milo looked toward the room.
“Bad.”
“How bad?”
“Dehydrated. Bleeding from both front paws. Abrasions around his neck. He kept circling.”
“Was he aggressive?”
Milo hesitated.
“No.”
Lena looked sharply at him.
“What?”
“He wasn't aggressive.”
The entire room seemed to tighten.
Milo continued.
“He was scared. He snapped once when I moved a metal cart, but he didn't lunge. I sat outside the holding cage for almost an hour.”
“What changed?” Walt asked.
“The next morning.”
“The transmitter,” Lena said.
Milo nodded.
“He started attacking after the maintenance contractor came.”
Dominic turned toward Fletcher.
“When exactly was that?”
Fletcher checked his phone.
“8:40 a.m.”
Milo looked at the incident records.
“First serious attack, 9:07.”
Twenty-seven minutes.
Lena felt anger crawl into her throat.
They hadn't found a vicious dog.
They had manufactured one.
Dominic walked away from the group.
For a moment, he put one hand against the wall.
Nobody spoke.
When he turned back, his face had become controlled again.
“Recover the missing footage.”
Milo nodded.
“I'll try.”
“Not try.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Do what you did when everybody else stopped looking.”
Something passed across Milo's face.
He sat at the reception computer.
For the next forty minutes, the building seemed to divide into three worlds.
In one, Fletcher gave names, phone numbers, messages, and banking information to Dominic's security team.
In another, Dr. Sato worked with Walt to determine how to safely image the device beneath Rook's skin.
And in the third, Lena sat beside a door.
She talked now.
Not much.
Nothing complicated.
She told Rook about Vermont.
About snow.
About the creek behind her grandmother's barn freezing so thick in January that she used to lie on her stomach and watch trapped bubbles beneath the ice.
She told him about an old sheep dog named Abel who stole dinner rolls from the kitchen and then acted morally offended when accused.
Rook listened.
Or maybe he didn't.
It didn't matter.
Her voice created continuity.
No shocks.
No restraints.
No hidden pain.
Just one sound that kept meaning the same thing.
Safety.
After nearly an hour, Rook moved.
His huge paw appeared through the gap.
Lena stopped talking.
The paw remained there.
She didn't touch it.
After a minute, it shifted until the edge rested against her jacket sleeve.
Dr. Sato saw it.
Her eyes filled.
“He's asking.”
“Asking what?”
“To know where you are.”
Lena slowly placed two fingers against the floor near his paw.
Not touching.
Rook slid forward.
The side of one toe met her knuckle.
He froze.
Lena froze too.
His breathing slowed.
Dominic watched from the far end of the corridor.
Nobody said anything.
Rook stayed like that for three minutes.
Then Milo shouted.
“I've got something.”
The spell broke.
Everyone turned.
Milo was hunched over the computer.
“I didn't recover the missing file. But the camera has an automatic thumbnail cache.”
Dominic approached.
“Meaning?”
“When motion is detected, the system generates a preview image before encoding the full video. Whoever deleted the footage deleted the video file, but not all the thumbnails.”
He opened a folder.
Tiny still images appeared.
Rain.
Van.
Two figures.
Rook being carried on a canvas stretcher.
Then a man turned toward the camera.
His face was blurred by rain.
But one hand was visible.
On his finger was a black signet ring.
Lena stood.
“That’s him.”
Dominic's jaw hardened.
“Zoom.”
Milo enlarged the image.
Pixelated.
Imperfect.
But enough.
The ring wasn't generic.
A silver letter was engraved into the black stone.
V.
Milo whispered, “Vale?”
Dominic stared at it.
“No.”
His voice was colder than Lena had heard yet.
“That ring isn't mine.”
“Whose is it?”
Dominic didn't answer.
One of his security men did.
“Elias Kane.”
The name landed heavily.
Lena looked between them.
“Who is Elias Kane?”
Dominic stared at the screen.
“My head of security.”
Nobody spoke.
“He's worked for me eighteen years.”
Walt exhaled.
“And he has access to your property.”
“Yes.”
“Your dog.”
“Yes.”
“Your security cameras.”
“Yes.”
“And presumably information about Hallie.”
Dominic looked toward Fletcher.
“Yes.”
Lena felt pieces locking together.
“You trusted him.”
Dominic's face remained still.
“With my life.”
She looked at Rook.
“Maybe that's why your dog survived.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
“If a stranger took him, Rook would've fought immediately.”
She nodded toward the screen.
“But someone he trusted could lead a blind dog anywhere.”
The words struck harder than she intended.
Dominic turned away.
Milo clicked the next thumbnail.
The stretcher disappeared inside the building.
Another figure stepped from the van.
Only partially visible.
Woman.
Long coat.
Dark hair.
She handed something to Elias.
Milo zoomed.
A folder.
On its front was the Apex Logistics logo.
Lena stopped breathing.
“What the hell?”
Dominic looked at her.
“You know her?”
“No.”
Milo went to the next image.
The woman turned.
For half a second, her face was visible.
Lena's stomach dropped.
She did know her.
Not well.
But well enough.
“That's Mara Vance.”
“Who?”
“My regional operations manager.”
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
“At Apex?”
“Yes.”
“She controls Warehouse Seventeen?”
Lena thought of every locked door.
Every route suddenly reassigned.
Every time Mara had told drivers never to enter the south loading bay.
“Yes.”
Her phone rang.
Everyone jumped.
Lena pulled it from her pocket.
Unknown number.
Dominic said, “Don't answer.”
It stopped.
A message appeared.
One image.
Lena opened it before anyone could stop her.
It was a photograph of her apartment building.
Taken minutes earlier.
Beneath it was one sentence.
You should have delivered the food and gone home.
Dominic looked over her shoulder.
Another message appeared.
Ask the dog what happened to the last girl who got curious.
Then a third image loaded.
A young woman sat tied to a chair in a dark room.
Brown hair.
Terrified eyes.
Fletcher saw it.
He made a sound like someone being struck.
“Hallie.”
Behind the chair, painted across a concrete wall, was a faded number.
Warehouse Seventeen.
Lena looked at Dominic.
“We're going.”
May you like
He was already reaching for his coat.
This time he didn't tell her no.
