Lena — Wednesday, November 18, 2026, morning
Alma called at eight ten. Lena was putting a lid on coffee when she saw the name. She answered with one hand, still trying to get the lid straight with the other.
“She's here,” Alma said.
Lena stopped.
“Nadia?”
“She's here. She's come home. It was him. Ray Mercer. She says he kept her somewhere.”
The lid bent under Lena's thumb. Hot coffee struck the side of her hand.
“Are you safe where you are?”
“We're at my house. She's going to get checked. She walked here. I didn't know what to—”
“Is Ray there?”
“No.”
Lena put the cup down. Nadia was speaking beyond the phone, a low hoarse voice interrupting somebody else. She could hear Tessa too.
“Another woman,” Alma said. “She's saying there's another woman there.”
“Tell me what Nadia needs right now.”
Alma said they were going for care. Lena told her not to delay that for questions and took the destination. She asked whether Nadia would speak long enough to say where Mercer was and where the other woman might be.
The sounds changed, a hand against the microphone, then a breath very close to it.
“He let me out,” Nadia said.
“Nadia, I'm Lena Ortiz. Where did he let you out?”
She named a place at the town edge and tried to explain where she'd walked from. Lena wrote it down as she spoke. Mercer had driven her there this morning. Before that they had been at a cabin. She didn't know its address. He was expecting her to go back.
“When?”
“Ten.”
“This morning?”
“I'm not going back.”
“Okay. You don't have to. Tell me about the other woman.”
Her name was June. She'd been inside when Nadia left, alive, her ankle hurt. She could get up but not move quickly. Nadia had gone to get things, a borrowed car and what June needed. She said that twice. Lena asked what might help them reach the cabin and wrote the few things Nadia could describe before passing it on. A road, a turn she couldn't name, a view she might recognize. Not an address.
“Did he say where he was going after he dropped you?”
“No.”
“What was he driving?”
Nadia told her. She was still talking when Alma asked to have the phone, wanting to get moving. Lena asked one more question about the last time Nadia had seen June: this morning, before the drive. Then she let Alma take over and arranged where someone would meet them.
Owen was in the next room. Lena went to him while Alma was still on the line and held up the written name. Named allegation of confinement, another woman alive and injured at dawn, Mercer mobile, Nadia released this morning. The response began around her before she'd finished putting the call into words.
Local officers went to the Mercer home and known places connected with him. His vehicle information went with the locate request. The work yard, addresses, people who could say where he'd be: each became a task with somebody at the other end of it. Lena gave the partial cabin description, making clear that no definite address was available. Property and route work would run alongside Nadia's further account.
She called the number Ray had given them. It rang until a woman answered, breathless, annoyed by the effort of coming to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Ruth Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Ortiz. I spoke to your husband yesterday. We urgently need to find him.”
“He isn't here.”
Lena looked at the number on the screen. His mobile. “Is this his phone?”
“Yes. He left it charging.”
“When did he go out?”
“Eight, about. He's getting some things for me. What's happened?”
Lena asked what things, where he meant to get them, what he was driving. Ruth told her about the cupboard, a shelf and storage boxes, a list she had written. She was meant to see him at one.
“Why do you need him?”
“Nadia Bell has returned. She says your husband confined her, and another woman, at a cabin. Officers are coming to speak with you and help locate him.”
The line went quiet. Lena could hear a television, then the sound stopped.
“She says Ray?”
“Yes.”
“He told me he gave her a ride.”
“I need to ask whether you know of a cabin or another property he uses.”
“His uncle's. Walter Danner. He still owns it. Ray goes up there sometimes.”
“Do you have a number for Walter?”
“Yes. Wait.”
Lena heard a drawer open, then the clink of something dropped. Ruth read the number, stopped and corrected the last two digits. Lena repeated it. She asked whether Ruth had been to the property. She hadn't. She knew Walter lived elsewhere now; Ray had helped him with the place and still had access.
“What about the road?”
“I don't know the road. Ask Walter. He's there, he'll answer. He's always home this time.”
It was eight twenty. Lena sent Owen the full name and number while Ruth was still speaking. He acknowledged them, then asked her to repeat the last digits too.
“He's supposed to be helping me,” Ruth said.
Lena asked her to keep the list and messages about his errand. They would ask about those too. When she ended the call, Owen already had someone arranging initial support with Nadia and Alma.
“I'll go to the house first,” she said. “Then to her.”
He nodded. The first application was already being put together from Nadia's account, the identification and the corroboration they had. Now the people working on it had an owner to call and a parcel to find.
Before Lena reached the house, the officer with Nadia sent a short account of his further questions. A low window in the utility room. June had favored the high ground, a stone wall and a light farther beyond it; Nadia had wanted the road. June could put a little weight on the ankle, slowly. The officer had drawn what Nadia described and sent the page with the message at eight thirty. Lena called him back about the light. Nadia couldn't say whether it had been on a house. Something that had looked like work being done. He had already passed that distinction to Owen.
At nine a local officer let her through the front gate. There was an empty place in the driveway, a second car farther over, somebody's jacket lying on the back seat. Lena looked at the empty space before she looked at the house.
Ruth met her in the hall. She had put on shoes but was still wearing the cardigan she'd slept in, one pocket pulled down by something heavy. Ray's phone, Lena thought, and was about to ask when Ruth brought it out.
“I don't want to carry this.”
The officer took it from her. She watched him put it down and went to the kitchen without saying anything else. Lena followed. A young man was standing beside the table, holding an open cardboard box against his stomach. He set it down when she came in.
“Jamie,” Ruth said. “Our son.”
Lena gave her name. Jamie's hand was warm when he shook hers. He was trying to work out whether he ought to keep holding it until she'd said what he needed to hear.
“Is he here?” he asked.
“Not yet. We're trying to find him.”
“At the place?”
“Officers are checking his uncle's property. Your mother gave us the name.”
He nodded as though he'd been given a task. Then he looked at his mother, who was moving a piece of paper out of the damp circle beneath a cup.
“I'll finish with this,” he told her.
“You don't have to.”
“I started.”
He picked up the box again. Lena asked if she could speak to him after he'd put it down. He said he could talk now. He was moving his mother's things from the back room so she could sort them without bending over the boxes. Folders and workbooks, a mug with a small chip in it. He put the mug on the table within her reach.
Ruth looked at it for a long moment.
“He put that away yesterday,” she said.
Nobody asked who she meant.
At nine twelve Owen called while Jamie was fitting the last folder into the space he'd made. The owner-name search had returned a parcel and an aerial image, with a reference to the deed. Walter had answered. He confirmed the place, the little cabin at the back and the old track that reached it. He hadn't been there recently. Ray had keys; Walter had no idea whom he might have taken there.
Lena stepped into the hall. Owen talked her through the image while she opened it. The larger roof near the road wasn't the cabin. Walter had pointed out the smaller rear building and described the approach, including where the track divided. A unit was on its way. The warrant application was being completed with the parcel and the particular building; an officer would swear it to the issuing authority. Owen wanted to know whether Ruth had said anything about weapons. Lena gave him her answer and the limit of it.
When she went back into the kitchen, Ruth was staring at her.
“He answered?”
“Yes. They're going to the property.”
“I told you he would.”
Lena could not tell whether she meant Walter or Ray. She asked about the recent journeys, the keys, anything Ray had said about going there. Ruth answered each question exactly as asked. Jamie had never been there. He remembered hearing Walter's name and wondering, years ago, why his father would drive so far to fix somebody else's place when their own screen door kept catching.
“He was with me,” Jamie said.
“When?”
“Sunday. And last night.”
“Tell me about last night.”
Jamie described the workspace, the repair he was doing, his father arriving around six. They'd eaten. Ray had brought a blanket back from Sunday, said something about a sink and the mark beside his eye. He'd stayed until a quarter past seven, more or less. Jamie could check what time he'd sent his mother a message afterward.
“And Sunday?”
“Morning. We moved a bench.”
“You saw him Monday?”
“No. I was at work.”
He looked at her notebook. “Is that when she—”
“Nadia says he picked her up Monday morning.”
Jamie sat down. His mother had remained standing; she put a hand on the back of his chair, then went to get her own glass of water. He watched her as though the movement had been a decision he ought to have helped with.
“He told me about talking to you,” he said. “I asked because of the picture. He said her car broke down.”
“What else did he say?”
“That he told you everything he could.”
Lena wrote it down. Jamie looked at the page until his phone rang.
He looked at the screen and silenced it. It rang again almost at once. Ruth said, “Answer it.”
“It's the cabinet.”
“I know.”
“I can call back.”
“Call her now.”
He stood and went toward the back room. Lena could hear him say his name, then a pause while the person at the other end spoke. Ruth sat at last, both hands around the glass.
“He's going to lose that job,” she said. “Not his work. This was something of his own.”
“He has to deliver it?”
“He promised today.”
Lena could hear him explaining something that wasn't the whole truth: a family problem, he wasn't going to be able to finish properly, he was sorry to call so late. The voice came closer and then farther away as he paced in the other room. He asked whether she wanted him to arrange someone else to take over. He could return what she'd paid him. Yes, he understood. No, it wouldn't be the work he'd promised by Wednesday.
Ruth closed her eyes.
“You needn't stay with me,” she called.
He didn't answer; the call was still going. Lena let Ruth have the silence instead of putting another question into it. An officer stepped into the hall to pass on information, and she heard the front door close behind him.
When Jamie returned he had put the phone in his pocket.
“She's going to have someone else finish,” he said. “I'll get it there. Or he'll collect it. We're sorting that out.”
“You've done most of it,” Ruth said.
“I told her I'd do all of it.”
“You could finish tonight.”
He shook his head. “Not today.”
She looked at him, waiting. He picked up one of the folders from the box and made a space on the table beside her.
“I'll call about getting it moved. Then I'm here.”
Ruth's mouth opened. She drank the water instead. Lena kept her notebook closed until Jamie sat again.
She went through the remaining practical points with both of them. If Ray contacted either, they were to tell the officers at once. He might come home. She did not ask them to lure him there or make an appointment for police. They had said what he had intended: one o'clock, the things for the cupboard, an ordinary job waiting for him. The people trying to find him had that information.
When Lena got up, Ruth asked whether Nadia was with her daughter.
“She has family with her. I'm going to see her now.”
Ruth nodded. She moved the mug off the top folder so Jamie could lay the next thing down. There was enough to do in the house for both of them. Lena left them doing it. In the car she checked the photograph Owen had sent. The rear building was so small she had to enlarge it to separate it from the trees. Then she called him, asked to hear as soon as the warrant was issued, and started the drive to Nadia.