Chapter 43 - Silas Disappears
Silas was supposed to graduate high school on Friday.
On Thursday night, he vanished.
His bed had not been slept in.
His phone was found beside the harbor.
Hope called Claire at 5:17 a.m.
“Mom.”
Claire heard panic immediately.
“What happened?”
“Silas is gone.”
Within thirty minutes, Camden police were searching the shoreline.
Ethan drove roads toward Rockland.
Hope stood beside the water clutching Silas’s phone.
“He wouldn’t leave this.”
Claire agreed.
Something was wrong.
At 7:10, a fishing captain reported seeing a teenage boy near the abandoned North Pier after midnight.
Police found Silas’s backpack there.
Inside were his wallet.
Graduation gown.
And a note.
I’m sorry.
Hope collapsed.
“No.”
Claire grabbed the paper.
Something bothered her.
The handwriting looked like Silas.
But the words didn’t.
Silas was direct.
Even angry, he explained.
He did not write vague apologies.
Claire turned the note over.
Nothing.
Then she smelled it.
Cedar smoke.
Vincent’s cabin had always smelled like cedar.
So did one other place.
The old storage warehouse near the former cooperage lumberyard.
Claire looked at Ethan.
“Call the police.”
Hope stared at her.
“Why?”
“I know where he is.”
Police arrived first.
The warehouse door was chained from outside.
That changed everything.
Officers cut it.
Inside they found Silas tied to a chair.
Alive.
Bruised.
Furious.
Hope ran toward him.
“Mom!”
She dropped beside him.
“Who did this?”
Silas looked toward the rear exit.
“Two men.”
“Why?”
“They wanted Grandpa’s box.”
Claire’s blood chilled.
“What box?”
“The cedar box with the letters.”
Police exchanged looks.
Silas continued.
“They thought I knew where Grandma kept it.”
Claire did.
A bank vault in Portland.
Nobody else knew.
One officer found a disposable phone near the rear loading dock.
The last outgoing call led to a prepaid number.
The number had contacted Damon Rusk’s defense investigator twelve times.
Hope stood.
“That bastard.”
Damon was in federal custody.
But apparently his reach wasn’t gone.
At the hospital, Silas received stitches above his eyebrow.
Hope refused to leave his bedside.
Claire sat near the window.
Silas looked at her.
“Grandma?”
“Yes?”
“They kept asking about one letter.”
“Which?”
“He called it the Zurich letter.”
Claire frowned.
There was no Zurich letter in the box.
Or at least none she remembered.
Silas continued.
“One guy said Grandpa hid proof that someone on Moretti Global’s current board helped Damon.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
Damon had not acted alone.
A nurse entered.
Behind her stood a man in a navy suit.
Moretti Global’s current CEO, Raymond Bell.
He carried flowers.
“I heard what happened.”
Claire stared at him.
He smiled sympathetically.
Then she noticed something.
Cedar dust on his left cuff.
Barely visible.
But there.
Claire said nothing.
Raymond approached Silas.
“Terrible business.”
Claire’s eyes stayed on the dust.
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
“Anything I can do?”
Claire smiled.
“Actually.”
She stood.
“There is.”
Raymond’s expression shifted.
“Tell me what you know about Zurich.”
The flowers slipped slightly in his hand.
May you like
And Claire knew.
They had found Damon’s partner.
