Chapter 2 - The Scent of Pine and Copper
The door of Mercer’s office slammed shut behind me with explosive force. I didn’t take the elevator; I threw open the emergency stairwell door and took the concrete steps three at a time, bursting into the damp evening air of Nashville.
My phone was vibrating in my pocket. Claire’s name flashed on the screen with a cheerful, sunlit portrait of her smiling at a private polo match.
“Darling,” her text read, “the florist needs to confirm the imported white peonies for the ballroom archway. Where did you disappear to? Dinner with Daddy is at eight.”
A guttural roar tore from my chest. I stared at the screen, every instinct screaming at me to drive straight to the Whitmore mansion and rip the truth out of her throat. But blind rage would destroy my children. Claire held all the social and institutional cards in this state. If she caught wind that Mercer had folded, she would use her family’s offshore resources to erase every trail leading to my missing daughter.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Marcus Vance, the head of Bellamy Global Security—a retired federal marshal who had served my father for twenty years and had been sidelined ever since Claire began embedding her own security personnel into my life.
Marcus picked up on the second ring. “Rowan?”
“Marcus,” I said, breathing hard as I threw myself into the driver’s seat of my SUV. “I need you, your entire off-the-books investigative unit, and four unmarked vehicles. I need an iron-clad perimeter established around Alan Mercer’s office within fifteen minutes. Take his hard drives, his server backups, and his physical safe. Do not let him contact anyone, especially Claire Whitmore or her father.”
Marcus didn’t ask questions. “Consider it done. What else?”
“I need you to trace Megan’s current location,” I choked out, a burning tear finally slipping past my lashes and cutting hot across my cheek. “She was walking westbound on Old Hillsboro Road, about four miles outside of Franklin, two hours ago. Carrying two infants. Wearing faded denim and a gray shirt. Find where she is staying, Marcus. Do not approach her. Do not scare her. Just send me the coordinates.”
“Understood, boss. Give me thirty minutes.”
I sped down Interstate 65 into Williamson County, my hands clamped onto the steering wheel like vices. The twilight sky deepened from dusty rose into bruised indigo. Memories attacked me from every angle: Megan laughing as we painted the guest room of our first cottage; Megan bringing me warm coffee late at night when I was closing our first merger; Megan whispering that she loved me for who I was, not for the Bellamy fortune.
And in return, I had thrown her into the wilderness. I had left the woman I took sacred vows with to scavenge aluminum cans by the side of a Tennessee country road just to afford powdered milk for my twin boys.
Forty minutes later, my dashboard screen illuminated. Marcus’s voice came through the hands-free console.
“We found her, Rowan. She’s at the Shady Pines Trailer Park off Highway 96. Lot fourteen. It’s... it’s bad, sir. The unit is scheduled for structural demolition next month. The power is cut half the time.”
My throat locked completely. “Stay on the outer perimeter, Marcus. Nobody moves in except me.”
I pulled off the highway onto a cracked, unpaved gravel road winding through overgrown pine thickets. Shady Pines was a forgotten ghost town of rusted aluminum trailers, rotting wooden porches, and flickering sodium lights. Lot fourteen sat at the very edge of the woods, its dented metal walls streaked with green mold, windows covered in plastic sheeting held down by duct tape.
Beside the front steps sat the battered burlap sack I had seen earlier, bulging with crushed soda and beer cans.
I killed the SUV’s engine and headlights. For a long, silent moment, I couldn't move. The shame was a physical boulder sitting on my chest, threatening to crush my lungs. What right did I have to step out of this eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle? What right did I have to look into the eyes of the woman I had destroyed?
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Then, through the thin aluminum walls of the trailer, a faint sound drifted out into the cool night air.
It was the thin, hungry wailing of an infant, followed by the soft, trembling voice of a mother singing a lullaby through her own tears.
