Chapter 5: The Man Miles Owed
Diane's contact called Reid the next afternoon.
His name was Carver.
He didn't give a first name.
He spoke in short sentences and asked twice to confirm that the line was private.
Reid put him on speaker at the kitchen table while I sat across from him with a notepad and a pen I never used.
June was in the next room watching something quiet on Reid's laptop.
Theo was asleep in the bassinet two feet from my chair.
"Miles Shaw," Carver said.
"I've been looking at him since this morning.
You want what I found or you want the short version first?"
"Short version," Reid said.
"He's alive.
As of forty-eight hours ago."
Reid's hand went flat on the table.
"Where?" I asked.
"That's the longer version.
He's not local.
He moved — voluntarily, from what I can tell.
No signs of physical coercion at the departure point.
He left on his own."
"He ran," Reid said.
"That's one word for it.
The man he owes money to goes by the name Garrett Foss.
Mid-level, but connected enough to make life uncomfortable.
Foss isn't the type to chase someone across state lines over a personal debt — too much exposure.
But he is the type to make sure Miles knows the debt doesn't disappear just because he does."
"How much?" I asked.
A pause.
"Sixty-two thousand dollars."
Reid closed his eyes.
"Miles borrowed sixty-two thousand dollars from this man," I said slowly.
"Borrowed is generous.
It was structured as an investment arrangement.
Miles was supposed to return the principal plus forty percent within ninety days.
He missed the window by six weeks."
I wrote the number on the notepad.
Stared at it.
"Can Foss be paid off?" Reid asked.
"Probably.
Men like Foss prefer money to complications.
But the number has grown.
Interest, penalties, what he calls inconvenience fees.
You're looking at closer to ninety thousand now."
Reid said nothing.
I looked at him.
His face had gone very still — the way it did when he was running numbers internally, measuring what was possible against what was real.
"Where is Miles now?" I asked.
"I have a probable location.
A motel outside of Asheville.
He paid cash, used a different name, but the description matches and he used his own car.
He's not particularly good at disappearing."
"Can you get a message to him?"
"I can try.
No guarantees he responds."
"Tell him June is safe," I said.
"Tell him she's with us.
Tell him we need to talk before anyone does anything else."
Another pause.
"You want him to come back."
"I want him to call.
That's a start."
"Understood.
I'll reach out today." Carver paused once more.
"Mrs.
Shaw — the man he owes.
Foss.
He doesn't know about the child yet, as far as I can tell.
I'd keep it that way."
The line went quiet after that.
Reid set the phone down on the table.
We sat in silence for a moment.
From the other room came the faint sound of June laughing at something on the screen — a sudden, bright sound, completely out of place with everything around it.
"Ninety thousand dollars," Reid said.
"I heard."
"I have some savings.
Not all of it."
"I have some too."
He looked at me.
"Maren—"
"He's your brother," I said.
"And June is in our living room.
We don't get to pretend this is someone else's problem."
"I'm not pretending anything.
I just—" He stopped.
Pressed his fingers against his eyes.
"I should have dealt with this eight weeks ago.
When he first called.
I should have pushed harder."
"Yes," I said.
"You should have."
He looked up.
He had expected me to soften it.
I didn't.
"You should have told me," I said.
"Eight weeks ago, you should have sat down with me and said: Miles is in trouble.
Here's what he told me.
What do we do?
And we would have figured it out together.
Instead you carried it alone and it walked through our hospital room door at five in the morning."
Reid's jaw worked.
"I know."
"I'm not saying this to punish you.
I'm saying it because if we're going to fix this — and I think we are — then I need to know that the next time something like this happens, you don't disappear into it alone."
He was quiet for a long time.
"The next time," he said finally.
"There's always a next time with families.
That's what families are."
Something shifted in his face.
Not relief.
Something more careful than relief.
"Are we still a family?" he asked.
I looked at Theo in the bassinet.
At the notepad with the number written on it.
At the door to the next room, where June's laugh had gone quiet and she was probably watching something with wide, serious eyes.
"We're something," I said.
"I don't know exactly what yet.
But we're not nothing."
He nodded.
He picked up his phone.
Then he set it down again.
"What if Miles doesn't call back?"
"Then we go to Asheville."
Reid looked at me.
"I just had a baby," I said.
"Give me a week."
For the first time in two days, something almost like a smile crossed his face.
It didn't last.
But it was there.
Then his phone lit up on the table.
Unknown number.
Reid looked at it.
Then at me.
He answered.
Three seconds of silence.
Then a voice — thin, careful, unmistakably Miles.
"Reid.
Is she okay?"
Reid's hand tightened on the phone.
"She's okay," he said.
"Miles — where are you?"
But the line had already gone quiet.
And then, from somewhere in the background of the call before it cut, I heard something that made my stomach drop.
A second voice.
Low.
May you like
Close.
"Time's up."
