Chapter 138
Chapter 138:
Ashely swung the sedan hard into the alley entrance, tires smoking as they clawed for grip on the wet pavement.
The alley was empty.
Just overflowing trash cans, sodden cardboard, and the skittering of rats in the shadows.
“The dot said they were here!” Cailin didn’t wait for the car to stop. She threw her door open and stumbled out, her legs barely holding her as she hit the ground.
She forced them to move. She scanned the pavement — muddy from the morning rain.
Tire tracks. Fresh. Deep.
“Elia!” Her voice cracked off the brick walls and came back to her, unanswered.
She ran deeper into the alley.
𝗔с𝘁i𝗏e с𝘰𝗆𝗺𝗎𝗇𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘰𝘯 g𝖺𝗅𝘯𝗼𝘷е𝗅ѕ.c𝘰𝗆
Something glittered near a green dumpster. A flash of pink.
Cailin slowed. She moved toward it, her breath catching in her throat, and crouched down.
She picked it up.
A small pink sneaker. Light-up soles. Velcro straps.
Covered in something dark.
She touched it. Sticky. Red.
Blood.
“No,” Cailin whispered.
The sound that came out of her next wasn’t a word. It was a scream — pure, animal grief that tore her throat raw. She dropped to her knees in the mud, pressing the shoe against her chest with both hands.
“No. No p>
Ashely reached her in seconds. She saw the shoe. She saw the blood. “Don’t look,” she sobbed, trying to ease it away. “Cailin, don’t look p>
“I’m too late.” Cailin was hyperventilating, the world spinning and tilting around her. “They killed her. They killed my baby p>
Police sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, drawing closer.
Cailin’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. She couldn’t feel anything beyond the wet mud soaking through her knees and the shoe clutched in her hands.
It buzzed again. And again.
Ashely reached into her pocket and pulled it out. “It’s Aron.” She put it on speaker.
“Mom! The watch signal moved! It’s not in the alley!” Aron’s voice was pitched high, frantic.
Cailin’s head snapped up. The sobbing stopped. “What p>
“The signal is moving again — and it’s fast!” Aron shouted. “It’s back on the main road p>
“She must have dropped the shoe to trick them, or she kicked it off!” Davy shouted from somewhere in the background.
Cailin looked at the shoe again. The blood was fresh, but there wasn’t much of it — just a smear.
“Is the heart rate monitor active?” she demanded. Her voice had changed entirely. The grief was gone, burned away and replaced by something cold and lethal.
“Yes — 140 beats per minute,” Aron confirmed. “She’s scared, but she is alive, Mom. She’s alive p>
Cailin stood up. She wiped the mud from her knees, then wiped the blood from the sneaker against the rough fabric of the coat Ashely had thrown over her shoulders on the way out of the apartment.
“She left me a sign,” Cailin said softly. “My smart girl p>
A nosebleed. Elia always got nosebleeds when she was frightened or bumped. It wasn’t a wound. It was a message.
“Where are they now?” Cailin got back into the car and pulled the door shut.
“Highway 95. Heading south,” Aron directed.