Chapter 3 - THE YELLOW COAT
I stared at the yellow sticky note on the back of Sarah Hayes's cracked ID badge. My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I felt dizzy.
David isn't helping them. They have him. Look in the lining of Grace's yellow coat.
Footsteps pounded on the kitchen tiles behind me. Principal Whitaker appeared in the office doorway, his chest heaving, his face mottled with rage. Mrs. Caldwell stood right behind him, blocking our only exit.
"Give me that badge, Jennifer," Whitaker demanded, holding out a trembling hand. "You are meddling in things you don't understand. If you walk out of this school right now and keep your mouth shut, I'll make sure Grace's name is removed from the transfer list."
"Where is Sarah Hayes?" I asked, slipping the cracked badge into my pocket and positioning Grace and Oliver behind me.
"Sarah had a mental breakdown yesterday after realizing she couldn't care for her son," Mrs. Caldwell said smoothly, though her eyes darted nervously toward the hallway. "She voluntarily admitted herself to a care facility and signed temporary custody of Oliver over to the district."
"That's a lie!" Oliver cried out, tears spilling down his cheeks. "My mom wouldn't leave me! And you stole her bracelet!"
"She dropped it when she was crying," Caldwell snapped at the boy. "And if you don't behave, Oliver, you won't be allowed to visit her."
I looked at Mrs. Caldwell's wrist, then back at Whitaker. If Sarah Hayes was a nursing assistant, she knew how the system worked. She wouldn't just sign away her son unless she was being threatened with something much worse. And she had left a message specifically for me.
"Move out of the doorway, Thomas," I said coldly. "I am taking my daughter home. And as of right now, Oliver is coming with me."
"You have no legal right to take that boy!" Whitaker stepped forward, grabbing the doorframe.
From the kitchen, Ruth Jenkins stepped up behind Mrs. Caldwell. She was holding her cell phone up, the red recording light blinking brightly.
"I've got the local news station on speed dial, Thomas," Ruth said, her voice steady as steel. "And my nephew is a dispatcher for the county sheriff. Do you want me to call them right now and explain why you're trapping a mother and two nine-year-olds in my kitchen?"
Whitaker froze. He looked at the recording phone, then at me. Slowly, he stepped back, his eyes narrowing into slits.
"You take that boy off campus, Jennifer, and I'll report it as a kidnapping," he hissed.
"Call whoever you want," I said.
I gripped Grace's and Oliver's hands and pushed past Mrs. Caldwell, walking briskly out of the kitchen, through the cafeteria where dozens of children were staring in stunned silence, and out the double doors toward the front office.
"Grace, where is your yellow coat?" I asked urgently as we hurried down the main hallway.
"In my cubby, Mommy," she said, struggling to keep up with my long strides. "Outside Mrs. Caldwell's classroom."
We turned the corner into the fourth-grade wing. The hallway was completely empty. I found Grace's cubby, labeled with her name in bright crayon, and pulled out her heavy yellow winter coat—the one she had worn yesterday over her stained yellow sweater.
I didn't wait until we got to the car. I dropped to one knee right there by the lockers and ran my hands along the bottom hem of the coat.
In the left sleeve lining, my fingers brushed against something hard and rectangular.
There was a small tear in the stitching. I reached two fingers inside and pulled out a silver USB flash drive, wrapped tightly in a crumpled cafeteria napkin.
"Mommy, what is that?" Grace asked, her eyes wide.
"Daddy put that there," Oliver whispered suddenly.
I stopped cold and looked at the boy. "What did you say, Oliver?"
"Yesterday afternoon," Oliver said, glancing nervously back toward the cafeteria. "While Grace was scrubbing the tables, Mr. Morgan came into the hallway. He looked really scared. His hand was bleeding. He put something in Grace's coat pocket and told me if I said anything to Mrs. Caldwell, bad people would hurt my mom."
My breath caught. His hand was bleeding.
Wait. If David was the mastermind behind the Morgan Family Hospitality Group stealing lunch funds and trafficking children into a private boarding school for federal grants, why would he be bleeding and hiding evidence in our daughter's coat?
"Jennifer! Stop right there!"
At the far end of the hallway, the heavy glass front doors of the school burst open. Two men in dark suits—men I had never seen before—walked in alongside Principal Whitaker. They weren't police officers. They moved like private security.
"We have to go," I whispered.
I shoved the USB drive deep into my jeans pocket, grabbed Grace's coat, and pulled both children toward the side fire exit at the opposite end of the corridor.
"Don't let her leave the building!" Whitaker's voice echoed down the tiled hallway.
I pushed the heavy metal crash bar of the fire exit. The alarm immediately blared, a deafening screech that filled the air as we burst out into the cold October afternoon.
My SUV was parked at the far end of the parent lot. We sprinted across the wet asphalt, the children's breath coming in ragged gasps. I unlocked the doors, threw Grace and Oliver into the back seat, and jumped behind the wheel.
As I backed out of the space, the two men in dark suits ran out of the front entrance. One of them pulled out his phone, taking a picture of my license plate.
I floored the gas pedal, tires screeching as we peeled out onto the main road.
Once we were three blocks away, my hands were shaking so violently I could barely hold the steering wheel. I looked in the rearview mirror at the two terrified children in my back seat.
"Grace," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Yesterday, when Daddy was at the school... did you see who he was with?"
Grace nodded, clutching her yellow coat to her chest. "He was with the lady who owns the big white house by the lake. She was yelling at him."
My blood froze.
The big white house by the lake belonged to Evelyn Vance—my husband's estranged stepmother, and the actual majority shareholder of the Morgan Family Hospitality Group. A woman who had cut David out of the family business five years ago.
Or so David had told me.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumpled cafeteria napkin that had been wrapped around the USB drive. I unfolded it with one hand against the steering wheel.
May you like
Written inside in David's unmistakable, messy handwriting was an address on the south side of town, followed by six words that shattered everything I thought I knew:
I'm not the Morgan who signed.
