Chapter 3: What Was Under the Spare Tire
I set the photographs face-down on the workbench.
I couldn't look at them anymore.
The spare tire sat in a recessed compartment beneath a thin piece of carpeted board.
I'd lifted hundreds of these in my career.
My hands knew exactly where to press.
The board came up.
Underneath the spare, wedged against the wheel well, was a small metal lockbox.
Gunmetal gray.
Scratched at the corners like it had been handled many times.
A combination lock on the front, four digits.
I tried Lori's birthday.
Wrong.
I tried the year I found her.
Wrong.
I stood there staring at it, and then something made me try the date on the note I'd just read.
The date stamped in the upper corner of the first photograph — the morning I'd found her in the trunk.
The lock clicked open.
Inside was a folded document, a USB drive, and a photograph I hadn't seen in the envelope.
The document was a birth certificate.
Lori's birth certificate.
The real one — not the amended adoption copy I had at home.
This one listed her full birth name, her date of birth, her place of birth.
And in the space marked *Mother*, a name I didn't recognize.
Elena Vasquez.
In the space marked *Father*, three words that made the shop go silent around me.
*Unknown — see attached.*
I reached for the photograph.
It showed a young woman, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, sitting in a hospital bed.
She was holding a newborn wrapped in a yellow blanket.
Tiny blue birds.
The woman's face was turned slightly away from the camera, but I could see she was crying.
Not sad crying.
The kind of crying that happens when something is being taken from you.
Someone else was in the photograph.
Standing near the door.
A man in a dark suit.
He wasn't looking at the woman or the baby.
He was looking directly at the camera.
I didn't know his face.
But I recognized the ring on his right hand.
A heavy gold signet ring with a flat black stone.
I'd seen that ring before.
My phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
I answered before it finished the first ring.
"You found the box," the woman said.
It wasn't a question.
"Who is Elena Vasquez?" I said.
A pause.
Long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
"She was Lori's mother," the woman said.
"She was also my sister."
I sat down on the concrete floor.
I didn't decide to.
My legs just stopped working.
"Your sister left Lori in that trunk?"
"She didn't leave her." The woman's voice was steady, but only barely.
"She was forced to.
There's a difference.
And the man who forced her — he's been looking for Lori for three years."
The fluorescent light above me buzzed and flickered.
"What does he want with her?"
"There's a will," the woman said.
"A very large estate.
And Lori is the only legitimate heir."
I looked at the photograph in my hand.
The man in the dark suit.
The ring.
"Who is he?"
May you like
"His name is Garrett Hale," she said.
"And he already knows where you live."
