Shadow Of Grace

Chapter 6: The False Trail

Clara could not sleep the whole of that night. She and the detectives had turned up every possible means of tracing Edward but without success. The day that Edward had disappeared haunted her like an evil spirit that she could not extinguish. His voice haunted her mind—he had yelled out to her that afternoon, a wail from the van that she had not been able to reach in time. The memory pierced her chest and left in its trail a wake of shame and anguish.

She perched at the edge of her bed with her hands tightly grasped. Out in the world, the neighbourhood buzzed with fretful grumbling. People gossiped just the way they always did—gossiping all the time. Some theorised that Edward had probably escaped the cruelty of Mr Marcus. Others talked of falling into the hands of Angelo. Some went so far as to blame Marcus for doing it himself and wanting to get rid of a boy who had begun to outshine him.

Clara didn’t care for the side banter at all. It didn’t do anything. What mattered was this—Edward was nowhere to be seen. All of the questions that went through her were about where he went, and how she could retrieve him.

She grabbed her telephone, went to the door, and declared that she would go to the office of the detective. She told herself in a whisper, “I will find you, Edward. Even if no one is ready to provide assistance, I will.”

When she went through the corridor, her thoughts were of Edward's face — the quiet smile, the unobtrusive bearing of burdens, the fragility and unbreakableness he conveyed at one and the same time. Today, for the first time, it came to Clara how very necessary he was to her. Edward was a friend and more than a friend — he was her strength and her inspiration.

She would not let Marcus kill him. She would not let the shadow of Angelo consume him. And she certainly wouldn't let the rumour spread through the alleys determine his future.

Today would not end in desperation. Today, she would face the only one powerful enough to stand against both Marcus and Angelo: the sponsor. She threw a shawl around her shoulders and stepped into the morning illumination. With each stride she made, her purpose imprinted itself in her mind — she would not relax until she found Edward.

The detective's office had a faint scent of cigarette smoke, yellow paper, and ink. The blinds kept the window partially shaded, cutting the sun in sharp narrow lines through the room. There were files, case reports, and photos scattered across his desk, but the man sitting across from them looked guarded and focused. His eyes were fixed, his jaw fixed, the kind of man who had seen entirely too much of the city going downhill.

Clara didn't hesitate at all. Her hands shook but her words cut through the thick atmosphere sharply.

“Edward has been kidnapped. I know it wasn’t his choice. Somebody KIDNAPPED him away. You… you gotta help me find him.”

The detective leaned back in his chair, crossed arms. He looked at her intently, almost gauging if it was grief that talked or honesty. There was a moment of uncomfortable quiet before he sank to a crouch.

“You’re not the only one,” he said in hushed tones. “There were sightings of Angelo’s men loitering around the south docks the day that Edward went missing. They don’t arrest people for manners’ sake. If they do have him, he’s a pawn.”

Clara's throat tightened. "Then why are we sitting around? Let's get going there now—"

But the detective’s hand lifted to stop her.

“It is not that easy. If we rush blindly, they will kill him before we get to the door at all. We must be patient, thoughtful. That boy’s life is at stake.”

Clara's heart dropped but she regained her composure. "Then I will help you. I know the patterns of Edward, where he walks, where he'd pass through. I can give you more than guesses."

That finally elicited a spark of respect in the eyes of the detective. He picked up a notepad.

“Talk. Details are everything. We have to know the ground better than they do to get him out of Angelo’s clutches.”

She experienced a tiny infusion of hope for the first time since the abduction — frail and precarious, but real.

Clara leaned forward and gripped her hands around the chair arm as the detective wrote in his notebook. Her mind went back to the day Edward went missing and had to retrieve each and every detail.

"He'd usually come back through Harbour Street," she said to me, her voice strengthening with the retelling. "It is quiet there, less traffic, but it cuts the time in half. Someone wanting to cut ahead of him would do it there."

The detective grunted and jotted it down. “And who saw him last?”

She swallowed. “I did. I didn’t see him but I heard him yell my name… from the inside of a van.” She let her voice die away. Guilt pricked her chest. She gripped her hands together to keep them from shaking.

The detective didn’t soften, but his eyes sharpened. “That van matters. What colour? Any markings?”

“Black. No plates. I didn’t see the driver.”

He smiled gloomily, as though the scene in his brain was filling itself in. “That’s the way of Angelo. No loose ends. And if it’s his men, he won’t keep the boy in the open either. He has debt cages— warehouses where people disappear until he makes up his mind about them.”

The comments left Clara restless "You mean… Edward is possibly locked in one now?"

The detective tapped his pen against the desktop. “If he is alive, then yes. And that will give us time — not much, but enough. We will follow his men wherever they relocate. Somewhere they will slip up. They all do.”

Clara stepped in close. “Well then let me help. I know Edward’s patterns. He goes near the market on a Thursday, near the bars when he is evading Marcus’s men. Somebody might have seen him or noticed the van.”

He hesitated, staring at her. She was not a blindly sorrowing child, but intense and dogged, and that gave her a value. He grunted a sharp yes.

“Fine. You accompany me. But get this straight — you do what I do. If you barge in, you’ll slaughter the guy yourself.”

She breathed shakily, but resolve sparked in her eyes. “I'll do whatever it takes. But don’t ask me to sit and wait and let him suffer.”

The detective prodded a small folder in her direction. Pictures were in it — men with intense eyes and grizzled faces, Angelo’s subordinates.

“Then start here,” he said to her. “See if she has noticed one of these men near Edward. Each face is a thread, and we're going to require them all.”

She flipped through the pictures, her chest tightening up. One face she recognised well — she is the one who is hit by her bag in her altercation while Edward is being scolded by them. She gently touched the photograph with trembling fingers.

“Him. I saw him. He is the one who beat up Edward badly.”

The detective's jaw clenched. "Then we're closer than I thought."

She felt a shift in momentum for the first time. The hunt for Edward had started.

Afternoon spilt into a darkness of shadow-lined alleys. Clara trailed in the detective's wake at a slow pace through the alleys while he threaded through them like a shadow that'd been well-trained in the corners. He spoke little, but his processes fascinated her—flinging coins into the pockets of grungy bodyguards, mumbling questions at inkeepers, flashing photos of Angelo's goons until a look of recognition glittered in a face.

At first, the trail seemed hopeless—so many lies, so much fear of Angelo. People shrugged, crossed themselves, and shut their doors. But the persistence of Clara filled the vacuum. She noticed things the detective did not: a butcher recalling the screech of tires come morning; a stable boy grumbling of a black van parked by the river; a drunk swearing he'd seen men carrying something big into the warehouse.

The detective assembled the puzzle in his mind, his notes circling one name: Dockside Warehouse 17.

By the evening, they stood on a rooftop that overlooked the warehouse. The building leaned against the river, reinforced windows and all, with guards in slow arcs pacing around it. Lantern light blazed through openings in the wood and danced like restless fireflies. Clara's breath caught in her throat.

"Is he in there?" she whispered.

The detective lifted a small scope, glass flashing. He watched the movements of the guards, the transactions between them, and the large padlocks on the side doors. His quiet bothered her until finally he sighed.

“Yes. He’s inside. Alive.”

Clara's heart sprang with joy — but her relief was gobbled up by terror at once. “Then let’s go in? We can put a stop to it tonight!”

Detective dropped the scope, his jaw clenched. “No. If we hurry, they will cut his throat before we get across the yard. Angelo’s guys murder their debts the moment they catch a whiff of trouble. That boy is leverage and not life. Until Angelo tells them to do so, they will keep him alive. Our work is to survive his patience without provoking it.”

Her hands bunched into fists, nails gouging her palms. Every second that Edward waited in those walls was like fire running through her very veins. But she tore her eyes back to the warehouse: the gun-toting men, the shadows flitting inside, the impossible odds.

The detective gathered his notes. “We found him, Clara. That is the first victory. Do not conflate it with the last. Rescuing him will require more fortitude. It will require timing.”

Clara swallowed apprehensively, her eyes fixed upon the boarded windows. Somewhere beyond that darkness, Edward was chained up, awaiting, with no idea just how close or far away the rescue was.

And for the first time since his disappearance, Clara exactly knew where he was—though could not reach him.

But what Clara didn't see and the detective couldn't possibly imagine was that they were looking at a stage specially set up for them. Hours before that, Angelo had been told by his people: the girl and the detective had snooped a bit too far. Angelo had smiled frostily and had Edward tossed out of Warehouse 17, chained and tossed, to another hidden spot on the other side of town.

“Let them think he’s there,” Angelo had instructed her. “Let them plot and stage them for shadows.”

But now, Clara's eyes fastened upon the warehouse as it would be the solution to each prayer without realising that Edward was already gone — his tears stifled by a deeper, darker dungeon.

The eyes of Clara wouldn't avert from the warehouse. Shadows whispered his name, the winds became his breath looking for her. She urged the detectives to move increasingly before it would be too late.

But they hesitated. “If we rush them, they will cut his throat before we move through the door,” one warned.

Clara's hands trembled. "So then we just sit back and let him die?" The darkness came thicker than before, and it consumed the street in quiet. Clara got up and looked at the warehouse that seemed to hold her entire world inside it. Guards at the complex laughed, shuffled card decks, and pretended to protect a detainee no longer in the cell. Empty cruelty made the complex look busy. All the while back in the city, Edward’s world was cruder than the rest: locked in a gloomy attic room, head hung low, a bucket of cold water flung against him. He awoke to the voice of Angelo, vitriolic and low in pitch. “You'll beg me for death, Edward. but not tonight.” Edward shivered, his mind flashing Clara’s name. He whispered, almost soundless, Clara…