Page 165 of Hidden Tide
A man speaks rapidly on the other end.
Marquez’s face goes still.
“When?”
She listens.
“Is he alive?”
I grip Ben’s arm.
Marquez turns toward us.
“The vehicle transporting Elliot Bell was struck at an intersection two blocks from the studio.”
“By who?” Keating demands.
“A stolen delivery truck.”
“And Elliot?”
“He was taken from the police vehicle.”
Arthur Bell’s son is gone.
Marquez ends the call.
No one speaks.
On the monitor, the pieces of Hazel’s music box remain scattered across the bedroom floor.
Simon Vail smiled because he knew we were already too late.
He hadn’t destroyed the music box to find Grandpa’s evidence.
He destroyed it to send us looking in the wrong direction.
Ben moves beside me.
His expression is hard.
Focused.
“He doesn’t have Hazel’s frame,” he says.
“How can you know that?”
“Because if he had it, he wouldn’t need the winding key.”
I look toward the steamer trunk.
Three frames remain.
Simon has the key to reach one of them.
And now he has Elliot Bell.
“What do we do?” I ask.
