NIGHTFALL: THE BROKEN SON-IN-LAW'S LAST WAR

Chapter 8: Midnight Tomorrow

Natalie had seen the screen over my shoulder. Her face had gone white.

I stood up, slid the phone into my pocket, and walked out of the living room into the back hallway, past the police officer at the door, as if I only needed some air. She followed me ten seconds later.

"Show it to the detective," she whispered. "Right now, Adam."

"No."

"No?" She grabbed my arm. "They have my mother! There's a detective sitting twenty feet away with a whole police department behind him!"

"And the message says if I bring police, she dies."

"They always say that! That's what kidnappers say in movies, and then the police save everyone!"

"Natalie, listen to me." I kept my voice low and steady. "These aren't movie kidnappers. These are the same people who walked into your grandfather's house dressed as waiters. They cut the cameras an hour early. They hit the yacht club from the water, where nobody was watching. They plan everything. If they see one police car within a mile of that shipyard, your mother is dead before the first officer opens his door."

Her grip loosened. Her lips trembled.

"And if you go alone," she said, "you're dead."

"Maybe."

"Don't you dare say maybe to me!"

"So it's true."

We both turned. Tyler stood at the bottom of the back stairs, his face blotchy and red, his eyes swollen from crying. I hadn't heard him come down. That told me how tired I was.

"I heard you," he said, his voice cracking. "They want you. Not Mom, not Grandpa, you. Mom's tied to a chair right now because of you!"

"Tyler, keep your voice down," Natalie hissed.

"Why should I? Everybody should know!" He jabbed a finger at my chest. "She said it yesterday morning, trouble follows you, and she was right! So go! Go trade yourself! That's what they want, isn't it? Give them their stupid cook and get my mother back!"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do," I said.

He blinked. Whatever he'd expected me to say, it wasn't that.

"Just not the way they think," I added.

Before he could answer, the front doorbell rang, and a minute later Jason Whitlock swept into the house with two big men in black suits behind him. He went straight to Harold in the living room, and I followed in time to hear him speak.

"Harold, I came as soon as I heard. Whatever these people want, I'll pay it. Five million, ten, it doesn't matter. Whitlock Capital will cover every cent."

"They haven't asked for money," Okafor said from his corner. "They haven't asked for anything yet."

"Then when they do." Jason turned, and his gaze landed on me in the doorway. "And I've brought my own security team. Former special forces, all of them. Real professionals." He smiled at me, slow and smooth. "With respect, Adam, this isn't a job for a cook. Leave it to the men who know what they're doing."

"Thank you, Jason," Harold said weakly. "Thank you."

Jason was watching me the whole time. Just for a second, his eyes dropped to the pocket where my phone was, and something sharp and curious moved behind them.

Then it was gone, and he was all warm concern again.

On my way back out, Okafor caught my arm in the hall.

"If anyone contacts you," he said quietly, "anyone at all, you call me first. Understood?"

"Understood," I said.

He didn't let go right away. He knew a lie when he heard one; he just couldn't prove it yet.

The next afternoon, I lay on my stomach in the long grass on a hill above Saltmarsh, with an old pair of binoculars from the Gray Heron pressed to my eyes.

The shipyard had been dead for years. Rusting ship hulls sat on wooden blocks, their sides peeling away in long red strips. Cranes leaned at strange angles. A big metal warehouse with a broken roof stood near the water, and the windows on its upper floor had fresh black plastic taped over them.

That was where she was.

I watched for four long hours without moving. I counted the guards: a man on the warehouse roof with a rifle, two walking a slow circle around the hulls, one by the gate, and one more who came and went from a small door at the side. Five that I could see.

Just before sunset, a figure passed one of the upper windows where the plastic had torn loose. Tall, slim, platinum hair cut short, one arm held stiff against her body in a sling. The woman from the van, nursing the shoulder I'd put a bullet through.

Six, then.

I memorized every path between the hulls, every broken fence, every shadow.

The message had called me Nightfall. On Sunday night, the woman on the radio had only called me the cook. Somewhere between Sunday and today, someone had told her exactly who I was, and only a very small number of people alive could have done that. The list in my head was short, and every name on it belonged to a man I'd once trusted.

When I got back to the cottage, it was nearly eleven at night, and Natalie was sitting in the dark kitchen waiting for me. She stood up when I came in.

I'd changed into black clothes. The pistols from the boat sat in holsters under my jacket. A rolled-up black mask stuck out of my back pocket.

She stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, and maybe she was.

"You're really going."

"Yes."

"Okafor said he'd have officers posted at the edge of the city tonight, in case they call. If you just told him..."

"Then you'd lose your mother, and maybe me too." I took her hands. They were ice-cold. "Natalie, I know how to do this. It's the one thing in the world I'm really good at, and I hate that it's true. But tonight, I'm glad."

Her eyes filled with tears, but she held them back, the way I'd seen her do when she gave bad news to a child's parents.

"My mother set your plate by the door for two years," she whispered. "She called you a beggar in front of her friends. And you're walking into that place for her."

"She's your mother," I said. "That's enough."

She pulled her hands free and wrapped her arms around me, hard and fast, the first time she had ever held me. Then she let go just as quickly, as if she'd surprised herself.

"Who were you, Adam?" she asked softly. "Really?"

"Ask me again tomorrow," I said. "If I'm here to answer."

"Bring her home," she said. "And Adam... bring yourself home, too."

At twenty minutes to midnight, I parked the pickup a mile from Saltmarsh and walked the rest of the way through the dark marsh grass. The marsh smelled of salt and rot, and the frogs went silent as I passed. I breathed the way the doctors had taught me, in for four, out for four, and kept my mind on the warehouse.

At eleven fifty-eight, I reached the rusted gate.

It was standing wide open.

And sprayed across the metal in dripping red paint, fresh enough that I could still smell it, was a single word.

NIGHTFALL.

Somewhere inside the warehouse, a woman began to scream.