Chapter 5 - NOAHNoah wasn't missing for forty minutes.
He was missing for three hours and eleven minutes.
Long enough for every terrible possibility to become imaginable.
Police searched his normal route to school.
His friends were contacted.
Security cameras were checked.
His mother drove from parking lot to parking lot calling his name even though everyone knew he wouldn't hear her.
Cole and I stayed at his apartment because his commander had explicitly ordered him not to involve himself in the investigation.
He hated it.
I'd never seen my brother pace before.
Cole didn't fidget.
Didn't drum his fingers.
Didn't bounce his knee.
He was built around stillness.
That morning he walked from the kitchen to the window so many times I eventually said, “You're making me nervous.”
“Sorry.”
“You want to be out there.”
“Yes.”
“Would you find him faster?”
“Maybe.”
“That's not an answer.”
He stopped at the window.
“No.”
It surprised me.
“No?”
“There are fifty trained officers looking for him with access to traffic cameras, dispatch and location data.”
“So why do you want to go?”
“Because doing nothing feels worse.”
I understood that.
At 10:18 a.m., Sergeant Daniels called.
Noah had been found.
Alive.
I almost collapsed with relief.
He was sitting inside a coffee shop twenty miles north of home.
A store employee recognized him from a police bulletin.
“What happened?” I asked.
Daniels hesitated.
“No abduction.”
“Then why was his phone off?”
“He ran.”
“From Derek?”
“Yes.”
According to Noah, a dark pickup had followed him for six blocks while he walked toward school.
He couldn't identify the driver.
Instead of continuing, he ducked into an alley, turned off his phone because he believed he could be tracked, then boarded a city bus.
He changed routes twice before finally stopping at the coffee shop.
“Smart kid,” Cole said.
“Terrified kid,” I replied.
Both were true.
The pickup was never identified.
No proof connected it to Derek.
But investigators found something else that afternoon.
Derek owned a dark pickup registered under his construction company.
It was missing.
A warrant went out for his arrest.
Not for attempted kidnapping.
There wasn't enough evidence.
The charges related to assault, witness intimidation and destruction of evidence.
The story had moved far beyond a gym dispute.
News vans parked outside Harbor Point.
Reporters interviewed former students.
The county athletic commission announced an investigation into tournaments Derek had participated in.
His sponsors dropped him.
His online supporters became quieter.
Then, predictably, a new group appeared insisting he was the real victim.
I stopped reading comments.
Cole made me.
Technically he threatened to replace my phone with “one of those plastic toys they give toddlers.”
I believed him.
Three days passed.
No Derek.
Police received reported sightings from across Southern California.
Most were useless.
One person claimed he'd seen Derek in Arizona.
Another swore he was heading toward Mexico.
Nothing confirmed.
I spent those days at Cole's apartment feeling like my life had been placed in storage.
I couldn't return home.
I couldn't train.
I couldn't work because my employer told me to take the week.
I couldn't even walk outside alone without wondering whether the next truck turning the corner belonged to Derek.
By the fourth morning, I snapped.
“I need to go home.”
Cole looked up from making eggs.
“No.”
“That's not your decision.”
“Correct.”
“So stop deciding.”
“You asked my opinion.”
“I made a statement.”
“Then why are we discussing it?”
I stared at him.
“You're impossible.”
“I've heard that.”
“I can't hide here forever.”
“I'm not asking you to.”
“When can I leave?”
“When police think it's safe.”
“And if they never do?”
“They will.”
“You don't know that.”
Cole switched off the stove.
For once, he looked frustrated.
“What do you want me to say, Claire?”
“That I get some control over my own life.”
“You do.”
“It doesn't feel like it.”
He leaned against the counter.
“Then tell me what control looks like right now.”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came.
He waited.
Finally I said, “Going to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because it's mine.”
“Good reason.”
That annoyed me.
“What?”
“I said it's a good reason.”
“You're agreeing?”
“No.”
“Cole.”
“You wanted control. Control isn't everyone agreeing with you.”
I hated when he did that.
He picked up his phone.
“Call Daniels.”
“What?”
“Ask what precautions would make it reasonable.”
I stared at him.
“You'd take me?”
“If law enforcement clears it.”
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Daniels reluctantly agreed.
Two officers met us there.
The photograph Derek had sent me flashed through my mind as we pulled up.
Same building.
Same angle.
My windows looked down from the third floor.
Nothing appeared damaged.
Inside, everything was exactly where I'd left it.
That was somehow worse.
My coffee mug on the counter.
Jacket over a chair.
Laundry waiting beside the bedroom.
Ordinary life frozen at the moment before Derek changed it.
Cole checked each room even though police had gone in first.
I didn't tease him.
I went into the bedroom and began packing clothes.
Then I noticed the photograph.
It sat on my dresser.
Cole and me at a lake when I was twelve.
Our father had taken it.
Nothing strange about that.
Except I always kept it facing slightly toward the bed.
Now it was facing the doorway.
I stopped.
“Cole.”
He entered immediately.
“What?”
I pointed.
“The picture.”
“What about it?”
“It moved.”
He didn't dismiss me.
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“When were you here last?”
“The day of the gym.”
“Cleaning service?”
“No.”
“Maintenance?”
“No.”
Cole backed out of the room without touching anything.
He called Daniels.
Police arrived again.
This time they searched everything.
No forced entry.
No fingerprints that immediately mattered.
Then one officer inspected the sliding balcony door.
He found a tiny scrape near the lock.
Someone might have manipulated it.
Might.
That word became the theme of my life.
Might be Derek.
Might be old damage.
Might be nothing.
Then they found something that wasn't ambiguous.
Beneath my bed.
A black strip of plastic no larger than my thumb.
An officer stared at it.
Cole swore.
“What is that?” I asked.
Nobody answered quickly enough.
“Cole.”
He looked at me.
“Camera.”
My stomach turned over.
Police removed it carefully.
It was positioned toward the room.
I suddenly felt naked despite being fully clothed.
“How long?”
“We'll find out.”
“Was it transmitting?”
“We'll find out.”
“Did Derek put it there?”
Daniels answered.
“We'll find out.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I walked into my bathroom and threw up.
Cole waited outside the door.
He didn't enter.
Didn't tell me to calm down.
When I finally emerged, he handed me water.
“I want everything out,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Today.”
“Okay.”
“I don't care where it goes.”
“We'll handle it.”
“No.”
I looked directly at him.
“I'll handle it. You help.”
That distinction mattered.
He nodded.
“You handle it. I help.”
By evening my important belongings were packed.
Police kept the camera.
I returned to Cole's apartment exhausted.
At 8:46 p.m., Sergeant Daniels called.
They'd examined the memory card.
The camera had been active for nineteen days.
My knees went weak.
Nineteen.
That meant it had been installed before the gym incident.
“Derek was targeting me already.”
“Possibly.”
“Stop saying possibly!”
Daniels stayed calm.
“We need evidence.”
“What evidence do you need? My name was in his file. He threatened me. He had my address.”
“I agree it points strongly toward him.”
“Then say it.”
“I think Derek may have been watching you before the assault.”
I sat down.
“Why?”
“We found older footage.”
“What?”
“The camera overwrote files every few days, but technicians recovered fragments.”
I didn't want to ask.
I did anyway.
“What was on them?”
“You.”
My skin crawled.
“Anything else?”
“One clip appears to show whoever installed it.”
My heart hammered.
“Derek?”
“We only see part of the person's body.”
“Can you identify him?”
“Not yet.”
Cole put the call on speaker.
“What can you identify?”
Daniels paused.
“A tattoo.”
My mind went immediately to Derek's arms.
He had several.
“Which one?”
“Forearm. Looks like a compass with a snake around it.”
Cole looked at me.
“Derek have that?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Derek's forearms were covered with tribal patterns and a skull.
No compass.
No snake.
Daniels continued.
“We checked photographs too. Doesn't match.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
“So someone else planted it.”
“That's what it looks like.”
“Who?”
“We don't know.”
I thought of Derek's friends at Harbor Point.
The men who laughed.
The ones who followed him.
The students who treated his approval like currency.
“This wasn't just Derek.”
Cole had already reached the same conclusion.
“No.”
Daniels said, “We're reopening interviews with everyone close to him.”
I thought back to that night.
Faces around the mat.
One stood out.
A man named Travis.
Heavy beard.
Brown hair.
Always with Derek.
He hadn't defended Derek after the match.
He'd simply disappeared before police arrived.
“Travis.”
Cole looked at me.
“Who?”
“Travis Boone.”
I told Daniels.
Keyboard sounds followed.
“Description?”
I gave it.
Daniels went quiet.
“Sergeant?”
“I'm looking at his driver's license.”
“And?”
“He has a tattoo on his right forearm.”
My mouth went dry.
“What tattoo?”
Daniels answered.
“A compass.”
For the first time, we understood something terrifying.
May you like
Derek hadn't been acting alone.
And while every police officer in the county was searching for the loudest man in the room, the quiet one had been standing beside us the entire time.
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