Chapter 4 - CEDAR VALE
Cedar Vale Recovery Center had closed eight years earlier.
It sat almost three hours north of the city beyond a line of abandoned textile towns and forest roads.
The property had once been a private rehabilitation clinic.
After bankruptcy, it had changed hands twice.
The current owner was a holding company called Larkspur Medical Properties.
Ortiz discovered that information before midnight.
By one in the morning, she discovered something worse.
Larkspur Medical Properties had been created eighteen months before Mara disappeared.
Its registered agent worked for a law firm that had done business with Mercer Architectural Group.
I knew the firm's senior partner.
Simon knew him better.
Ortiz did not let me join the first search team.
I argued.
She refused.
"You have a traumatized seven-year-old."
"My wife may be there."
"And your son is definitely here."
That ended the argument.
I stayed with Perrin.
He refused to sleep in his bedroom.
Instead, we sat together on the living room sofa beneath three blankets while officers moved through our home.
Around two in the morning, he finally asked the question I had been dreading.
"Did you know Mommy was alive?"
"No."
"Why didn't you find her?"
The words hurt because there was no answer that could make them hurt less.
"I thought she died."
"Rhea told me you didn't want Mommy anymore."
I closed my eyes.
"What else did she tell you?"
"That you picked her."
He meant Rhea.
"She said if I kept asking about Mommy, you'd send me away."
I pulled him against me.
"That was a lie."
"She said you were going to have a new family."
My throat tightened.
"Perrin, look at me."
He did.
"There is no version of my life where I don't want you."
His eyes filled.
"Even if I was bad?"
"You weren't bad."
"I broke her perfume."
"I don't care."
"I went into the wall when she told me not to."
"I'm glad you did."
"I stole food."
I almost broke then.
"Why did you have to steal food?"
He looked down.
"She said dinner was only for children who behaved."
I stood so quickly the blanket fell to the floor.
I had to walk away.
Not because I was angry with Perrin.
Because I was afraid of what my face looked like.
Rhea had harmed my child while sending me photographs of him smiling.
She had staged video calls.
She had told me he was tired when he refused to speak.
Every memory from the last four months rearranged itself into something horrible.
At 3:14 a.m., Ortiz called.
I answered immediately.
"We're inside Cedar Vale."
"Is Mara there?"
A pause.
"No."
I leaned against the wall.
"But someone was."
She sent me photographs.
A hospital bed.
Medical restraints.
Recently used oxygen tubing.
A coffee mug still warm.
The team had missed whoever was there by less than an hour.
Then Ortiz sent another image.
A wall covered with photographs.
Photographs of me.
Perrin.
Our house.
Our office.
Mara.
Some pictures had been taken before her disappearance.
Others were recent.
One showed Mara sitting beside a window.
Her hair was much shorter.
Her face was thin.
But she was alive.
I stared at the photograph until tears blurred the screen.
"That's her."
"I know."
Ortiz's voice softened.
"We also found medication records under the name Mary Vale."
"How recent?"
"Yesterday."
I looked toward Perrin.
He had fallen asleep sitting upright.
"Then she's alive."
"As of yesterday, yes."
For the first time in two years, hope became something physical.
Painful.
Terrifying.
Real.
Ortiz continued.
"We found one more thing."
"What?"
"A list of payments."
"From who?"
"We're still tracing them."
Paper moved on her end.
"But one company appears repeatedly."
"Which company?"
She said the name.
May you like
"Mercer International Holdings."
That company belonged to me.
