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Mid-December
S everal days later Detective Kate Morgan walked into the office at ten o’clock in the morning.
Rodney looked up and smiled. “Wow, a late start for the day, huh ?”
She groaned. “I had to stop in and see the dentist this morning.” She tapped her mouth. “When Doug tackled me in the interview room, I took a blow on this side and had some cyst form,” she muttered, as she headed straight for the coffee machine.
“That sounds disgusting.”
“Yeah, right?” She gingerly sipped her hot coffee and winced as it washed over her mouth. “Anyway, it’s all fine now.” She sat down at her desk, sighed loudly, let her eyelids drop, and just relaxed. “Besides, I needed a couple days off.”
“You sure did.” Rodney chuckled. “The good news is, we finished the rest of the open cases. Of course the bad news is that we have more new ones to take their place.”
She nodded. “There is always another case.” She sighed and asked, “Anything important?”
“They’re all important.”
“Don’t give me that,” she said. “Anything major, anything different, anything unique?”
At that, Reese walked in and put a parcel on Kate’s desk. “This just came in for you.”
Kate frowned at it, then opened it up. It seemed to be a wooden puzzle box. She shook her head. “I don’t know why I have this.”
“I don’t know either,” Reese confirmed, “but it’s obviously addressed to you.”
She frowned at the intricate box. “I hate these damn things. I hate anything that makes me feel stupid, and puzzle boxes always make me feel stupid.”
“Why?” Rodney asked, as he walked over, looking at her gift. “Who’s it from? How come nothing identifies the sender?”
She frowned, picked up the packaging, and nodded. “Good point.”
Rodney added, “We should also have some system in place where we don’t let people open parcels like these, unless we know for sure it’s safe.”
“I don’t know that it is safe,” she murmured, “but it’s, for sure, a wooden puzzle box.”
Rodney nodded, examining the gift. “I think you take out one of those pieces, and the whole thing comes apart somehow.”
“You think so?” she asked. She frowned at it and tugged on one random piece. Sure enough, it came right out, and the whole thing fell apart. Inside was a small piece of paper. She picked it up, thinking it must have been some note from Simon. As she read the words, she froze. “ Uh-oh .”
“What’s the matter, Kate?” Rodney asked.
She looked over at him, the color draining from her face as she tried to speak.
He came around and snatched the note from her hand and read it. “What the hell?”
She looked at it again and frowned at Rodney.
Lilliana came over and asked, “What’s going on, you two?”
“Look at the message that was inside the puzzle box.” Rodney pointed at it.
“Read it,” Kate muttered. “Read it out loud.” Kate waited, squeezing her eyelids closed, waiting to hear the words that were now indelibly burned into her brain.
Lilliana read it out loud, as requested. “ Kate, if you want to see your brother again, time to start looking . You know what happened. You just have to think . Or maybe get Simon to help .”
Kate swore, as her thoughts mixed and churned in her head. She stared up at the two of them. “Oh my God.”
“Easy, Kate,” Rodney told her. “You don’t know that your brother’s alive. You don’t know that this isn’t just some sick joke.”
She stared up at him, tears in the back of her eyes, and she nodded. “I know that.… I know all of that, and yet it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. If there’s any chance that my brother is alive—”
“I know. We understand,” Rodney stated firmly. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, honest.”
She swallowed hard, even now as tears welled up in her eyes, and nodded. “Maybe, but who the hell would even know I was back to work today? Who the hell would know that my brother had gone missing all those years ago? Who the hell knows about Simon?”
Rodney and Lilliana shared a glance, then faced Kate. Lilliana said, with no mercy in her tone, “Those are questions we’ll have to ask you.”