Chapter 7 - THE CASSETTE TAPE
“Lock down a five-mile radius!” Detective Miller screamed into her radio as we sprinted out of the library and into the pouring rain. “I want choppers in the air the second this storm breaks. Nobody gets out of the county!”
I stood on the wet grass, staring at the empty tire tracks tearing through the mud where the ambulance had been parked.
Maya was gone. Again.
She had been right next to me. Safe. And in the span of five minutes, my uncle had orchestrated an extraction.
“He can’t get far driving a stolen ambulance,” Miller said, grabbing my shoulder. “It’s a massive vehicle with GPS tracking.”
“Marcus knows how to disable a tracker,” I said numbly. “He was Evelyn’s fixer. He spent thirty years burying her mistakes.”
“We’ll find them, Caleb. I promise you.”
I looked down at the velvet box still clutched in my hand. The cassette tape. For Caleb, when he is ready for the truth.
My adoptive father, Richard, had died when I was sixteen. I had always believed he was a quiet, passive man who just let Evelyn run the show. But he had left this for me.
“Detective,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Is there a tape player in your cruiser?”
Miller frowned, looking at the box. “Yeah, an old deck in the dash. Why?”
“Because Marcus is blindly loyal to my mother. If we want to know where they’re going, we need to know what Evelyn’s endgame is. And I think Richard left me the map.”
I ran to Miller’s cruiser, climbed into the passenger seat, and shoved the dusty cassette into the dash player. Miller slid into the driver's seat and turned the key to accessory mode.
The tape hissed for a few seconds.
Then, a voice crackled through the speakers. A voice I hadn’t heard in fifteen years.
“Caleb. If you are listening to this, I am dead, and your mother has finally lost her mind.”
I closed my eyes. The sound of his voice hit me like a physical blow.
“You need to know who Evelyn really is,” Richard’s voice continued, heavy with exhaustion. “She is not just greedy, Caleb. She is clinically, dangerously obsessed with legacy. Bloodlines. When she found out she was barren, it broke something in her brain. She adopted you to have an heir. But as you grew older, she realized she couldn't control you. You had too much of Sarah’s fire.”
I gripped the dashboard.
“Evelyn doesn’t want money anymore. She has more than she could spend in ten lifetimes. What she wants is a do-over. A pure slate. A child she can mold from the very first breath.”
The tape hissed.
“She purchased a property,” Richard continued. “Not under her name. Under a shell corporation. The Haven Trust. It’s an old, decommissioned lighthouse on the jagged cliffs of Point Reyes. She spent millions renovating the underground storage bunkers. It is completely off the grid. Unreachable by standard roads. If she ever feels cornered, if she ever feels like her legacy is threatened, that is where she will retreat. She will burn the rest of the world down to reign over the ashes there.”
The tape clicked, and went silent.
I looked at Miller.
“Point Reyes,” Miller said, instantly typing it into her squad car’s laptop. “It’s a three-hour drive toward the coast. If they swapped the ambulance for Marcus’s car, they have a head start.”
“Call the Coast Guard,” I said, opening my door.
“Where are you going?” Miller yelled.
“You have to follow protocol. You have to wait for backup and set up a perimeter,” I said, pulling the heavy tire iron from the back of my truck. “I don’t.”
I didn’t wait for her to argue. I jumped into my battered truck, ignoring the smashed front bumper, and threw it into drive.
I sped off the property, pushing the engine to its absolute limit.
The drive to the coast was a blur of black asphalt and blinding rain. My mind played a terrifying reel of Maya trapped in an ambulance, trapped in a car, trapped in the dark again.
I wouldn't let my mother take my family. Not again.
Two and a half hours later, the smell of salt and rotting seaweed filled the cab. The road turned to gravel, then to dirt, winding dangerously close to the sheer cliffs dropping into the churning ocean below.
Through the fog, the silhouette of the old Point Reyes lighthouse appeared.
Parked near the rusted iron door at the base of the tower was a black SUV. Marcus’s car.
I killed the headlights and parked a hundred yards back. I grabbed the tire iron and my gun, stepping out into the freezing coastal wind.
I moved silently toward the heavy iron door. It was slightly ajar.
I slipped inside.
The interior of the lighthouse was stripped bare, leading to a descending spiral staircase of rusted metal. Faint light glowed from the bottom, accompanied by the low hum of a massive generator.
I crept down the stairs, every step calculating, every breath silent.
At the bottom was a reinforced steel door. It was open.
I peered inside.
The underground bunker looked like a luxury hospital suite. White walls, state-of-the-art medical equipment, a massive bed.
Evelyn was lying on the bed, her face gray, an IV hooked into her arm. Marcus was frantically wrapping a massive bandage around her waist, trying to stabilize her broken pelvis.
And strapped to a chair in the corner of the room, gagged with thick medical tape, was Maya.
I raised the gun and stepped into the doorway.
“Step away from her, Marcus.”
Marcus whipped around, dropping the bandages. He looked exhausted, cornered, and incredibly dangerous. He reached for his waistband.
“Don’t,” I warned, keeping the sights locked on his chest. “I put one in your leg tonight. The next one goes through your heart.”
Evelyn let out a weak, rattling laugh from the bed.
“You’re too late, Caleb,” she gasped, her eyes burning with feverish hatred. “The storm... the roads are washed out. No one is coming for you.”
“I’m already here,” I said.
I kept the gun on Marcus and moved toward Maya. I kept my eyes up as my free hand found the edge of the medical tape over her mouth. I ripped it off.
Maya gasped for air. “Caleb, behind you!”
I spun around.
Marcus hadn’t reached for a gun.
May you like
He had reached for a flare gun.
He fired it directly at a massive cluster of oxygen tanks stacked near the doorway.
