Chapter 2 - The Car My Attorney Was Never Supposed to Touch

By morning, Detective Moreno had confirmed that Rachel’s Subaru had not left Chicago with her.

It had sat in an O’Hare economy lot for nine days, been towed, inventoried, then released through an authorization from Martin Vale’s law office.

Vale had represented me for twelve years.

He handled my divorce, coordinated the private investigators, and sat beside me in custody hearings telling me to remain calm because anger would make me look dangerous.

I wanted to call him.

Moreno told me not to.

So I waited while she traced the car through two sales. The current owner, a delivery driver named Tomasz Krol, still had it in his garage in Cicero.

When the door rolled up, I saw the faded blue paint and the cartoon astronaut sticker Lucas had put on the rear window at five years old.

I touched the peeling corner before I could stop myself.

The glove compartment held receipts, an old registration card, and a broken pen.

No chessboard.

Then Tomasz said his daughter had found a small magnetic game in the car when he bought it.

She brought it downstairs.

The board’s hinges were cracked. Several pieces were gone.

I opened it.

D6 was empty.

A black rook sat on C1.

Under the rook, fixed with yellowed tape, was a microSD card.

Moreno took it from me with gloved hands.

“You expected that?”

“No.”

“But Lucas expected you to understand.”

“Yes.”

Forensics made a copy that afternoon.

The card contained nine audio files and a folder of screenshots.

The first recordings were ordinary: Lucas laughing, Rachel reminding him about homework, a car radio murmuring in the background.

Then Rachel’s voice filled the room.

“If you’re hearing this, Sebastian, it means I was right about one thing and wrong about another.”

I stopped breathing.

“I was right that someone had access to our messages. I was wrong when I decided it had to be you.”

She described threatening texts from my number that I had never sent. One included a photograph of Lucas leaving school and a warning that she should think carefully before embarrassing me in court.

“Martin told me not to report it,” she said. “He said he could handle it privately.”

I remembered the fight that followed. Rachel accused me of using my position to frighten her. I thought she was creating evidence for custody.

We had both left convinced the other was lying.

Then her voice changed.

“Three weeks ago, I saw a Homefront Relief invoice on Martin’s desk. North Lake Strategic Services. The address is a mailbox store. I checked other payments. They don’t match any housing project.”

Homefront Relief was the veterans charity whose board I chaired.

My name raised much of its money.

Vale handled most of its legal structure.

“I asked him about it,” Rachel continued. “Two nights later someone followed me home.”

She inhaled shakily.

“If I disappear, I am taking Lucas because I don’t know who I can trust. That includes you. I’m sorry.”

My hands trembled.

“I tried to send you this before. Messages vanished. If Lucas gets this to you, listen before you come after us.”

The recording ended.

The screenshots were worse.

They showed texts supposedly sent from my number.

You are forcing me to make this ugly.

Do not test how much influence I have.

The language sounded close enough to me to be convincing, but not like me. It sounded like someone imitating authority.

The final image showed a Homefront Relief transfer.

$186,400 to North Lake Strategic Services.

Consulting.

I had never approved it.

Moreno warned me not to jump to conclusions.

“This proves Rachel suspected financial misconduct and that Vale’s office touched her car. It does not prove he threatened her.”

“I understand.”

“You need to mean that.”

I did.

Then she found who had used the office credential to release the Subaru.

Owen Pike, a paralegal who worked on my custody file.

He left Vale’s firm shortly afterward.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

Moreno’s expression tightened.

“Dead. Traffic accident ten months ago.”

The convenient shape of it made suspicion immediate.

I forced myself to say, “An accident can be an accident.”

“Good,” she replied.

When I returned to headquarters, Mills was waiting.

“A woman came asking for you.”

“Name?”

“She wouldn’t give one.”

“What did she want?”

“She said, ‘Tell him the astronaut is still on the window.’”

My skin went cold.

I looked back toward the garage in my mind.

The sticker.

Rachel knew.

“Where is she?”

“Gone before security could stop her.”

“Cameras?”

“Already preserving them.”

He handed me an envelope.

It was not addressed to me.

The front said:

EMILY SHAW.

I stared at the name.

Whatever Rachel was doing, she had trusted a homeless seven-year-old with a path she had not trusted me to see.

And somewhere in Chicago, my son knew enough to hide evidence inside a chessboard.

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The question was no longer only where Lucas was.

It was what he and Rachel had been running from.