The Threat Deepens

The name *Kovac* on the tracking screen pulsed like a heartbeat, blue against the black map of the marina. Lena Kovac was dead. Her ashes were supposedly in the family crypt, though Aris claimed they were under the roses. So who owned the boat?

"I'm going in," Claire said, ending the call. She didn't wait for Aris to argue.

She drove to the marina gate, her headlights cutting through the rain. The guard shack was empty, the barrier arm raised. The place looked abandoned, a graveyard of fiberglass and teak.

She parked the car and killed the engine. The silence was absolute, broken only by the slap of water against the hulls.

She followed the blue dot on her phone.

It led her to the end of the longest pier, where a modest cabin cruiser was docked. The name on the stern was painted in peeling gold letters: *The Ohio Star.*

A light was on in the cabin.

Claire stepped onto the boat, the deck shifting under her weight. She crept toward the cabin door, her hand tightening around the only weapon she had—a heavy brass flashlight she found in Aris's glove compartment.

She peered through the porthole.

The cabin was small, cluttered with fishing gear and old charts. A man was sitting at the table, his back to her. He was hunched over a laptop.

It wasn't David.

It was a stranger. Older, gray-haired, wearing a thick woolen sweater.

Claire pushed the door open. "Who are you?"

The man spun around, knocking over a coffee mug. He stared at her, not with fear, but with recognition.

"Mrs. Vance," he said. His voice was gravelly, worn.

"How do you know my name?"

"I've been waiting for you," he said. He closed the laptop. "Or someone like you. I knew Arthur would slip up eventually."

"Who are you?" Claire repeated, raising the flashlight.

"My name is Silas," he said. "I'm the one who found the boy."

Silas. The private investigator from the ledger. The one paid for *Reacquisition*.

"Where is David?" Claire demanded.

"He's not here," Silas said. "But he was. Earlier tonight."

"Where did he go?"

"To the water," Silas said, nodding toward the open sea. "He took the dinghy. Said he needed to think."

Claire looked out at the black expanse of the ocean. "In this storm?"

"He's a Vance," Silas said dryly. "They think they can control the weather."

He stood up, moving slowly, favoring his left leg.

"I didn't steal him, you know. Not really. I just found him. Arthur paid me to locate a child. A specific child. One who looked like him. One who had no one to miss him."

"In Romania," Claire said.

"No," Silas said. "Not Romania. Ohio."

He walked to a small safe bolted to the floor. He spun the dial.

"I kept the file," he said. "Arthur paid me to destroy it, but... insurance is a valuable thing in this line of work."

He pulled out a folder and handed it to Claire.

"The boy wasn't an orphan," Silas said. "He was a kidnapping victim. Taken from a park in Columbus in 1990. His name wasn't Andrei. It was Michael."

Claire opened the file. A missing person poster stared back at her. A toddler with blue eyes and blonde hair.

*MISSING: Michael Kovac.*
*Age: 2.*
*Last seen: North Columbus Park.*

Kovac.

Claire looked up at Silas. "Lena?"

"His aunt," Silas said. "Lena was his aunt. She didn't come to the house to be a surrogate, Mrs. Vance. She came to find her nephew. She took the job as a nanny because she suspected Arthur had him."

The pieces slammed together. Lena hadn't been a victim of circumstance. She had been an undercover operative. A desperate woman trying to rescue her family.

"And Arthur found out," Claire whispered.

"He found out," Silas agreed. "And he made her a deal. She could stay. She could raise the boy. She could be his mother in every way that mattered. But she could never tell him who he really was. And she could never leave."

"So she agreed," Claire said. "To save him."

"She agreed," Silas said. "Until the cancer got bad. Until she knew she was dying. Then she tried to leave the trail."

He looked at the door.

"You need to find him, Mrs. Vance. David. Because Arthur isn't the only one looking for him tonight."

"Who else?"

"The people I took him from," Silas said. "The brokers. They found out he's alive. They found out who he is. And they want more money."

A loud crash shattered the window behind them.

A brick landed on the cabin floor, surrounded by shards of glass.

Claire spun around.

There was no note attached to the brick. Just a symbol painted on it in red.

A circle with a line through it.

The target.

"They're here," Silas said, reaching for a flare gun mounted on the wall.

But Claire wasn't looking at the brick. She was looking at her phone, which had just buzzed with a notification from her home security system.

*Motion Detected: Carriage House.*
*Camera: Lily’s Bedroom.*

She opened the feed.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the nightlight. Her daughter's bed was empty. The window was broken.

And on the floor, amidst the glass, lay Lily’s favorite stuffed rabbit.

Its head had been torn off.

They weren't targeting Claire anymore. They were targeting her children.