Chapter 3 - The Brother Everyone Thought Gone
The ambulance arrived twelve minutes later.
David called anyway.
He told the dispatcher there was an injured man in his house, gave the address, and refused to explain how the man had ended up beneath the floor.
Ryan cursed him weakly from the couch.
“You should’ve listened.”
“I spent seven years thinking you were either a thief or dead,” David snapped. “You don’t get to come back and start giving orders.”
Chloe stood in the kitchen doorway with Lily pressed against her hip.
She had stopped crying.
That was worse.
Now she looked like someone waiting for a verdict.
When the paramedics arrived, Ryan gave a false name until David leaned over the stretcher and said, “Tell them the truth or I will.”
Ryan stared at him for a long moment.
“Ryan Hale.”
One paramedic paused.
The name meant nothing to him.
To David, it still meant half his childhood.
They stabilized Ryan’s leg, checked the head wound, and loaded him into the ambulance. David told Chloe he was going to the hospital.
“I’m coming,” she said.
“No.”
“David—”
“Stay with Lily.”
His daughter clung to Chloe’s sweater.
That alone made him soften his voice.
“I’ll call you.”
He did not kiss his wife goodbye.
During the drive, David sat beside Ryan while rain began ticking against the ambulance roof.
Under the bright medical lights, Ryan looked older than forty.
He was thirty-eight.
There were scars on his hands David did not remember. A crescent-shaped burn marked his left wrist. His right ankle was swollen badly enough that the paramedic suspected a fracture.
“Who did this?” David asked.
Ryan kept his eyes closed.
“No one person.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the safest one I have until I know who still works for Grant.”
David stared at him.
“Uncle Grant?”
Ryan opened his eyes.
“You still call him that?”
David almost said, Of course I do.
Grant Hale was their father’s younger brother, the charming uncle who had taught them to fish, bought David his first legal beer at twenty-one, and stepped in to stabilize Hale Development after Ryan vanished and their father died.
Grant had been at David’s wedding.
Grant was Lily’s godfather.
Grant came every Christmas with ridiculous gifts and too much bourbon.
David’s silence made Ryan smile without humor.
“Yeah,” Ryan murmured. “That’s what I thought.”
At Mercy General, doctors confirmed a cracked fibula, dehydration, two broken ribs, and a concussion. The head wound had been stitched badly with black thread.
David knew immediately Chloe had done it.
He pictured her kneeling on the basement floor—or rather beneath the living room floor—with a needle in her shaking hands.
The thought made him furious.
It also made him wonder why she had bothered.
A uniformed officer arrived twenty minutes later because the hospital had reported suspicious injuries.
David was standing near the vending machines when the officer approached.
“Mr. Hale?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Officer Dean Morris. I understand the patient was found in your home.”
David glanced through the glass door toward Ryan’s bed.
Ryan was watching them.
His face changed the moment he saw the badge.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
Morris asked reasonable questions.
How long had Ryan been in the house?
How had he been injured?
Why was there a concealed space beneath the floor?
David answered what he knew and admitted what he didn’t.
Then Morris asked, “Did Mr. Hale have anything with him when you found him?”
David’s fingers tightened in his coat pocket around the brass key.
The question was too fast.
Too specific.
“No,” David said.
Morris watched him for half a second longer than necessary.
Then he smiled.
“If you remember anything, call me.”
He handed David a card.
Ryan waited until Morris walked away.
Then he motioned David closer.
“Throw that card out.”
“Why?”
“Because Dean Morris used to run security at Hale Development.”
David frowned.
“He was a cop before that.”
“No. He became one after.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Dad fired him two weeks before I disappeared.”
David stopped.
Ryan looked toward the hallway to make sure no one was listening.
“Ask yourself why a patrol officer from a precinct six miles away showed up this quickly and asked about what I had on me before he asked who broke my ribs.”
David hated how much sense that made.
He called Chloe from the stairwell.
She answered immediately.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
A breath escaped her.
“Thank God.”
“Why did Lily recognize him?”
Silence.
“Chloe.”
“She saw him once.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
David closed his eyes.
“Last year?”
“He came to me because he couldn’t come to you.”
“That is not your decision to make.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Her voice trembled.
“He said if you knew he was alive, you’d go straight to Grant.”
David stared down the empty stairwell.
“And you believed him?”
“I didn’t at first.”
“What changed?”
“He showed me something.”
“What?”
Chloe hesitated.
“A photograph of my father.”
David’s anger stalled.
Chloe almost never talked about her father, Robert Bennett.
He had died in a construction accident when she was eleven.
“What did Ryan have to do with your dad?”
“More than I knew.”
David pressed his free hand against the concrete wall.
“Tell me everything.”
“I will.”
“No. Now.”
Another pause.
Then Chloe said, “Not over the phone.”
David nearly shouted.
But footsteps sounded below him.
He looked through the railing.
Officer Morris was climbing the stairs.
Slowly.
Not looking at David.
David lowered his voice.
“Lock every door.”
Chloe went quiet.
“What happened?”
“Just do it.”
He ended the call.
Morris reached the landing and gave him an easy smile.
“Everything all right?”
David slipped his phone into his pocket.
“Fine.”
Morris nodded toward the patient floor.
“One more thing. We pulled the name Ryan Hale.”
David waited.
“Your brother is still wanted for questioning in a financial crimes case.”
“So?”
“So once he’s medically cleared, someone will probably place him in custody.”
David looked through the glass door again.
Ryan was no longer in bed.
The blanket was thrown back.
The IV line hung loose.
A nurse hurried inside, confused.
David’s stomach dropped.
Morris followed his gaze.
For the first time, the officer’s smile disappeared.
May you like
Ryan Hale had vanished again.
And the brass key in David’s pocket suddenly felt much heavier.
