Page 54 of Enigma
“Who called it in?” Jason asked.
“It was anonymous.” Dean stepped closer, his expression growing more serious. “Look, Jason, I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re my family. Chelsea will never forgive me if I arrest her brother.”
“Then don’t arrest us,” Jason said. “Just listen to what we have to say.”
“But the town will never forgive me if I show favoritism toward family,” he continued.
Dean was quiet a moment, clearly weighing his options. The other officers watched him, waiting for orders.
“You have sixty seconds,” Dean said finally. “And this better be good.”
“Dad’s missing, Dean.” Jason launched into a condensed version of everything that had happened—Lloyd’s disappearance, the attacks they’d survived, the evidence they’d found connecting these crimes to this old office.
Dean listened without interrupting, his expression growing more troubled with each detail.
“Someone kidnapped him from a hospital in Florida, and we think they brought him back here.” Jason concluded. “The evidence in that building might be the only way to find him.”
Dean was quiet, processing Jason’s words before he finally said, “You’re telling me Lloyd’s been involved in some kind of criminal conspiracy for more than ten years?”
“That’s what the evidence suggests.” Olive stepped forward. “And now someone’s trying to clean up loose ends.”
“Which includes silencing us,” Jason added.
Dean looked back at the medical building, then at his fellow officers, then at Jason and Olive.
“This is way above my pay grade,” he said finally. “Even if you’re telling the truth, I can’t just let you walk away from breaking and entering.”
Olive’s heart thumped harder. “Then what are you going to do?”
Dean sighed and pulled out his handcuffs. “I’m going to have to take you in.” He paused, meeting his brother-in-law’s eyes. “But I’m going to try to be as fair and impartial about this as possible.”
As Dean stepped forward to cuff them, Olive’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. The evidence they’d photographed felt like it was burning a hole in her memory—so close she could almost taste the answers, yet completely out of reach at the moment.
Inside the Oasis Police Department, Dean sat across from them at a scarred wooden table.
“All right.” Dean clicked his pen. “Let’s go through this again, but with more detail this time. What exactly is going on?”
Jason shifted in his chair. “Dad’s been missing for two days. Someone tried to kill him and then abducted him from a hospital in Florida. We think whoever’s behind it brought him back here to Texas.”
His eyes widened. “That’s some serious stuff.”
Jason nodded. “It really is. I wouldn’t be here and in this position if it wasn’t. You know me well enough to know that.”
“I can agree with that last statement. However, you thought breaking into a medical building would help you find him how, exactly?” Dean’s expression held doubt.
Olive watched Jason carefully. They’d agreed not to mention the safe or the evidence they’d found—there was too much risk that that information would disappear once it became part of an official investigation. But they needed Dean’s help to navigate the local connections.
“Dad used to keep personal files at his practice,” Jason said. “Patient records, business documents, things that might give us a clue about who would want to hurt him or why they’d bring him back to Oasis.”
Dean made a note on his pad. “Did you find anything?”
“We didn’t have time to search thoroughly before you arrived,” Olive offered.
“And all this was because someone called in an anonymous tip.” Dean looked up from his notes, his brow wrinkled. “Any idea who might have known you were there?”
“We’ve been followed since this whole thing started,” Jason said. “Whoever took Dad has been tracking our movements, trying to stop us from finding him.”
Dean was quiet as he processed the implications. “You’re telling me there’s some kind of organized effort to keep you from investigating your father’s disappearance?”
