Chapter 5 - AFRAID OF DAD
The sentence on Avery's phone did not leave room for comfort.
Nia, Evan didn't betray me.
The person you need to be afraid of is Dad.
Nia read the photograph of the message on Detective Ruiz's screen until the words blurred.
Evan stood beside her, silent.
Lena Moss sat in the ambulance with Jayden, trying to keep him from hearing too much. Police lights strobed across the blue warehouse walls.
Nia finally looked at Ruiz.
“She means Raymond.”
Ruiz did not answer immediately.
“She called him Dad,” Nia said. “She wouldn't call Grant that.”
“I agree.”
Evan rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Where is Raymond now?”
“At headquarters. Being interviewed.”
“Then don't let him leave.”
Nia turned on him. “You don't get to issue orders about my father.”
“He may have helped take your sister.”
“And your father may have murdered your brother.”
The words cut both ways.
Evan went quiet.
Nia regretted them immediately, but she did not apologize. There was too much grief in the air already, and too many men had spent years making choices for women in the name of protection.
Ruiz said, “We're going downtown. We need to confront Raymond with the message.”
Nia looked at Jayden.
“I'll have an officer take him and Dr. Moss to a protected location,” Ruiz added. “Not child services. A police safe apartment. You can go there after.”
Jayden overheard enough to panic.
“No! Nia comes.”
Nia went to him.
“I will. I promise. I need to talk to Grandpa Ray first.”
Jayden's eyes were wet. “Miss Avery said promises only count if you come back.”
Nia swallowed.
“Then I'll come back.”
He held out his pinky.
She linked hers with his.
The interview room at police headquarters had beige walls, a metal table, and lighting cruel enough to expose every sleepless year on Raymond Carter's face.
He looked up when Nia entered behind Ruiz.
“What happened?”
“We found Avery's phone.”
Relief flashed across his face. “Then you can track—”
Ruiz placed a printed image of the draft message in front of him.
Raymond stopped speaking.
Nia watched him read it.
His hands began to tremble.
“Tell me why my sister was afraid of you.”
“Nia—”
“No speeches. No protection. No ‘things you don't understand.’ Just tell the truth.”
Raymond stared at the message.
Then he said, “I called Grant yesterday.”
Nia had prepared herself for a lie.
The truth hurt worse.
“Why?”
“Avery told me she was going to stop hiding. She said she had proof Caleb had been murdered and proof Grant had been stealing through the harbor project. She wanted to go to federal investigators after your wedding.”
“After my wedding?”
“She didn't know about the proxy then.”
“So why call Grant?”
“Because I was afraid he would kill her before she got there.”
Nia stared at him. “So you called the man she thought would kill her.”
“I thought I could make a deal.”
Evan laughed bitterly from the corner. “That's what he does. He makes people believe a deal is safer than resistance.”
Raymond looked at him. “I know that now.”
“You knew five years ago,” Nia said.
Her father flinched.
Ruiz leaned forward. “What did you offer Grant?”
“Silence. Again.”
Nia felt cold.
“Again?”
Raymond's face crumpled.
Five years earlier, after Avery appeared at St. Agnes Church, Grant had called Raymond. Somehow, within hours, Grant knew Avery had survived.
“He told me Caleb had stolen from Blake Meridian,” Raymond said. “He said Avery was involved. He threatened to have her charged with conspiracy and theft. Then he showed me photographs of you.”
Nia's stomach tightened.
“What kind of photographs?”
“You leaving college. Walking to class. Going to work at the coffee shop.”
She had been twenty-four.
“He said accidents happened to families that didn't know when to stop.” Raymond's voice cracked. “I believed him.”
“What did you do?”
“I signed a nondisclosure agreement and accepted a settlement.”
“How much?” Ruiz asked.
“Three million dollars.”
Nia pushed back from the table.
“You took his money?”
“I never spent it. I put it in an account Avery could access.”
“That doesn't make it clean.”
“I know.”
“Did Avery know?”
“Yes. She hated me for signing. But she used the money to disappear because we didn't know another way to keep Jayden safe.”
Evan looked at Raymond with something like recognition. Two men from different generations, both caught by the same trap and both convinced surrender could be disguised as protection.
Nia hated that symmetry.
Raymond continued. “Yesterday, I told Grant Avery intended to go public unless he agreed to meet with federal attorneys and surrender his records.”
Ruiz stared at him. “You warned him.”
“I thought I was negotiating.”
“You exposed her location.”
“I never gave him the location.”
“You met him at the hotel.”
Raymond closed his eyes.
“He told me he'd agree if I convinced Avery to bring the ledger.”
“And you believed him?” Nia asked.
“For about ten minutes.”
“What changed?”
“I saw Dean.”
Raymond's younger brother had spent years bouncing between failed construction businesses. Raymond explained that Dean owed money to Blake Meridian through private loans. Five years earlier, Dean had been working security logistics near Westbridge. Grant used his debt to make him help erase surveillance footage after Caleb's crash.
“Dean called me last week,” Raymond said. “He said Grant was cleaning up old problems. He was terrified.”
“So yesterday, when you saw him with Grant…”
“I knew Grant wasn't coming to surrender.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to call Avery. She didn't answer. I left the hotel to find her safe house.”
“And led them straight to her,” Ruiz said.
Raymond looked sick.
“Yes.”
Nia understood the draft message now.
Avery had seen Raymond with Grant. Then she had seen him approaching the warehouse after leaving the hotel. From Avery's perspective, the conclusion would have been obvious.
Her father had betrayed her.
Maybe not intentionally.
Maybe intent no longer mattered.
Ruiz's phone buzzed.
She stepped into the hall, then returned less than a minute later.
“Forensics unlocked more location data from Avery's phone. It left the hotel yesterday at 3:14 p.m., arrived at Pier 17 at 3:39, then moved again at 6:02.”
“Where?” Nia asked.
“Blake Meridian headquarters.”
Evan frowned. “The parking garage.”
“It stayed there eleven minutes, then moved west.”
Ruiz put a map on the table.
“The phone stopped transmitting here.”
Nia looked at the location.
She knew it immediately.
“No.”
Raymond stood so abruptly his chair scraped the floor.
“What?” Evan asked.
Nia touched the map.
“That's the old Carter cannery.”
Her grandfather had owned it before Carter Harbor Holdings became a real-estate company. It had been abandoned for almost twenty years, a brick complex beside the river where Nia and Avery used to sneak in as teenagers.
Raymond whispered, “The deed is still in a Carter subsidiary.”
Ruiz looked at him. “Who has access?”
“Me. Nia. Dean.”
“And Avery?”
“She would know every way into that building.”
Nia remembered summers spent daring each other across rusted catwalks. Avery had carved both their initials beneath a staircase no adult ever found.
A thought struck her.
“Her message may not only be a warning.”
Ruiz looked at her.
Nia read it again.
Nia, Evan didn't betray me. The person you need to be afraid of is Dad.
“Maybe she knew someone might see the message,” Nia said. “Avery loved codes when we were kids. Dad used to call the cannery ‘Granddad's monster’ because it scared us.”
Raymond stared at her.
“She used to say she was afraid of Dad whenever we played hide-and-seek there,” Nia continued. “Not our dad. The big painted fisherman on the old canning sign. We called him Dad because he looked like Grandpa.”
Evan blinked. “The sign still there?”
“Last time I drove past, yes.”
Ruiz was already moving.
Twenty-three minutes later, police surrounded the old cannery.
Nia watched from behind a line of patrol cars as a tactical team disappeared through the loading entrance.
The river wind cut through her sweater.
Evan stood several feet away. Neither of them spoke.
Then a gunshot sounded from inside.
Nia stopped breathing.
A second shot followed.
Ruiz shouted into her radio.
The answer came back in broken bursts.
“Officer down?” Nia demanded.
Ruiz held up one hand, listening.
Then she looked toward the building.
“They found Dean.”
“Alive?”
“Yes. Wounded.”
“And Avery?”
Ruiz listened again.
Her expression changed.
“No Avery.”
Nia's heart sank.
“But Dean is conscious,” Ruiz said. “And he's saying Grant moved her.”
“Where?”
Ruiz's gaze shifted to Evan.
Evan seemed to understand before she spoke.
“The Blake family house,” Ruiz said.
Evan went pale.
“No.”
Nia looked at him.
“Why?”
His voice dropped.
May you like
“Because there's a room under that house that doesn't exist on the plans.”
Nia watched the blue lights wash over his face and understood that every answer was opening another locked door. She had spent the morning believing the wedding was the center of the disaster. Now she saw it had only been the place where five years of buried choices finally collided. Somewhere ahead, Avery was still waiting for someone to reach her. This time, Nia intended to be part of the truth that arrived.
