Chapter 19 - The Paper Bird
Renick had people for everything.
Belle learned this over the next hour.
People who could copy a hard drive without altering metadata. People who could build a decoy inside a cracked plastic case. People who could make a tracking device small enough to hide in the fold of a paper crane. People who could find old ferry terminal blueprints in less time than Belle needed to make Micah a sandwich.
It should have impressed her.
Mostly, it made her wonder what else Renick had used people for before grief made him honest.
Ortiz supervised everything like a woman accustomed to standing between wolves and law. She did not trust Renick. She did not trust his men. She did, however, trust evidence, chain of custody, and Belle’s refusal to be intimidated.
That made Belle trust her.
At 10:30 p.m., Micah sat at the kitchen table in Aisling’s townhouse folding a new paper crane.
His hands shook at first. Then steadied.
Brinley watched like it was holy work.
“You fold birds?” she asked.
“My grandma taught me.”
“My mommy painted birds wrong.”
Micah nodded seriously. “Moms do some things wrong.”
Belle looked over.
Micah added quickly, “Not important things.”
Brinley considered this.
“My daddy makes toast black.”
Renick, standing near the window with stitches above his eyebrow, looked deeply wounded.
Belle almost smiled.
Almost.
Micah finished the crane. Eli inserted the tracker into a tiny slit beneath one wing. Ortiz sealed the decoy drive in an envelope.
“No child goes to that terminal,” Ortiz said.
Cormac’s call had demanded Micah, but Renick had no intention of obeying. Instead, one of Renick’s smaller men, Frankie, would carry Micah’s red backpack and wear his hood up in the rain just long enough for distant watchers to think the boy was present. It made Belle sick, but less sick than the alternative.
Micah tugged Belle’s sleeve.
“I should go.”
“No.”
“But he wants what I remember.”
“No.”
“Mom—”
Belle knelt so sharply the chair scraped.
“You are seven. You saved one child today. That is enough hero work for a lifetime.”
Micah’s eyes filled.
“I don’t want anybody else to fall.”
Belle pulled him against her.
Neither do I, she thought.
But aloud she said, “Then stay alive for me.”
Brinley approached Renick with the paper crane in both hands.
“For bad uncle,” she said.
Renick crouched.
“He is very bad.”
“Worse than blue lady?”
Renick glanced toward Ortiz, who was reading updates about Vivienne’s emergency detention.
“Yes.”
Brinley leaned closer and whispered something in his ear.
Renick went still.
Belle saw the change.
“What did she say?” Belle asked.
Renick looked at his daughter. “Brin, are you sure?”
Brinley nodded.
Renick stood slowly.
“She said Cormac has a boat room.”
Ortiz frowned. “Boat room?”
Brinley turned to Micah. “Like your box city. But boats.”
Micah said, “Models?”
Brinley nodded hard. “Mommy hid in boat room.”
Renick gripped the back of a chair.
“Where?” Belle asked.
He answered through clenched teeth. “The ferry terminal has an upstairs maritime museum. Closed twenty years ago. Cormac bought the building through a shell company.”
Ortiz cursed under her breath.
Belle looked at Renick. “Your wife may have been kept there.”
The words hurt him visibly.
“Or killed there,” he said.
No one corrected him.
At 11:40, they moved.
Belle stayed behind with the children because Micah was not going, but she refused to be left blind. Ortiz arranged a secure video feed from an agent’s body camera. So Belle watched from Aisling’s kitchen table with Micah on one side, Brinley on the other, Rosa behind them clutching Maribel’s hand.
The screen showed rain. Empty docks. Rotting wood. The old ferry terminal hunched against the black water like a beast at rest.
Renick entered first.
No dramatic speech. No army visible.
Just him, carrying an envelope, walking into the place where his family’s sins waited.
Cormac’s voice echoed from inside.
“Where is the boy?”
May you like
Renick held up the paper crane.
“Closer than you think.”
