Part 5
Investigator Kendra Price closed her laptop the moment the access alert appeared. Someone using Sheriff Dale Pritchard’s credentials had opened the protected-address record, and two vehicles had left the Vale towing lot less than five minutes later. She did not waste time discussing whether the events were connected.
“Take only what is already in your hands,” she said. “We move now.”
Ray Sullivan brought the car around to the service entrance while a state officer took a different vehicle out through the front lot. Natalie gathered Mason’s science binder, a phone charger, and the sweatshirt he had been using as a pillow. Caleb reached for both bags, then stopped when Mason caught his sleeve and would not let go.
They left through a rear stairwell and changed vehicles once beneath the covered garage of a medical office. Kendra kept their phones powered down until the second team confirmed that no one had followed. Forty minutes later, Ray drove them into a furnished apartment attached to a victim-services office outside Stonebridge County, where the exterior doors required state-issued access cards and no public registry carried the unit number.
Mason stood in the small living room without taking off his backpack. “Are we hiding again?”
“We’re moving before somebody reaches the wrong place,” Caleb said. He knelt to loosen one strap that had twisted against Mason’s neck. “Nobody is sending you back there.”
The answer did not make the fear disappear, but Mason allowed Caleb to take the backpack. Natalie sat beside him on the couch while Ray checked the windows out of habit and then deliberately stepped away from them. This was not a bunker, and Mason did not need another room full of men acting as if an attack had already begun.
Kendra waited until an assistant attorney general and the victim advocate had joined by conference line. She explained the monitored call twice: Natalie could stop whenever she wanted, she did not have to provoke Derek, and she was not being asked to win a confession. The purpose was to request her property and document whatever answer he chose to give.
Natalie looked at Caleb. “Don’t speak, even if he mentions Mason.”
Caleb set his phone face down. “I won’t.”
Kendra started the recording. Natalie dialed from a state line, and Derek answered before the first ring had fully ended.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
“I want the green ledger,” Natalie said. Her free hand pressed flat against her knee, but her voice remained clear. “It belongs to me. There are medical dates in it and papers from Mason’s school.”
Derek gave a low laugh. “You don’t get to make demands after running off with my property.”
“My notes aren’t your property.”
“Those notes don’t exist anymore.” He paused, listening for fear. “Neither does that report you kept whining about. Cody fixed it before it got past the county desk. He knows what a real domestic call looks like.”
Kendra wrote something on a legal pad and turned it toward Natalie: ASK WHO TOLD HIM YOUR LOCATION.
“Did Cody give you the address?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t need Cody to find you.” Derek’s confidence sharpened into anger. “You took a child out of his home and hid him with a soldier who hasn’t been around long enough to know his teacher’s name. By Monday, Russell will have an attorney asking why a frightened mother and a combat officer with a temper are keeping Mason in motels. Let’s see which story a judge likes.”
Caleb felt Mason’s fingers close around his wrist. He kept his eyes on his son instead of the phone.
Natalie inhaled once. “Return the ledger through my attorney.”
“Come get it yourself.”
“No.” She looked at Kendra, not for permission but to make certain the recording was secure. “You’ve said enough.”
She ended the call. For several seconds, her hand remained around the phone, though the pressure in her face had eased. She had not pleaded, explained, or allowed Derek to decide when the conversation ended.
“It corroborates interference with the prior report and gives us a fresh custody threat,” Kendra said. “It is not the whole case, but it matters.”
An officer appeared in the doorway and passed her a folded note. The two vehicles from the Vale lot were moving toward the vacated apartment. Kendra had already obtained approval to leave the unit empty and place officers in observation positions around it; fixed cameras covered the walkway, parking spaces, and both entrances. No civilian would be waiting inside.
Caleb stood. “I can identify Derek.”
“We have current photographs, Natalie’s identification, and officers who served the protection order this afternoon,” Kendra said. “You are not part of the operation.”
“If they go through that door—”
“Then trained officers will stop them.” Her tone softened without becoming negotiable. “Mason needs one adult who is not going toward the danger tonight.”
Caleb looked down. Mason had not released his wrist.
He sat again.
Ray found a deck of cards in a kitchen drawer, and Caleb dealt a slow game at the coffee table. Mason forgot the rules twice and apologized both times. Caleb simply showed him where the matching cards went, while Natalie sat close enough that their shoulders touched and Kendra worked at the dining table.
At 11:26 p.m., Kendra turned her secured laptop slightly. Headlights crossed the fixed camera view, then went dark before the first vehicle rolled into the lot. Derek stepped out with two men Caleb recognized from the Vale yard. “He was served at 4:18,” Kendra said quietly. On the screen, Derek approached the empty apartment, looked once toward the parking lot, and wrapped his hand around the door handle. He pulled, tested the lock again, then leaned toward the deadbolt as one of the other men moved toward the rear entrance…
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