to sign away.
At
2:11 a.m., a message arrived from the state police surveillance team.
The grandmother had been located.
Bus depot outside Lubbock.
Ticket under another name.
Destination: unknown due to cash purchase.
But she was not alone.
Grainy security footage showed Chloe’s grandmother standing near a vending machine with a man in a dark cap.
The investigator froze the image and sharpened it.
Mitchell recognized him from the old case file immediately.
The prosecutor’s investigator.
The man in the rural clinic photograph.
The man Chloe’s mother had named on the recording.
“He’s helping her run,” Mitchell said.
The investigator’s voice was grim.
“Or making sure she never talks.”
By dawn, state police intercepted the bus before it left the county line.
The grandmother was inside.
The prosecutor’s investigator was not.
He had vanished.
In her purse, they found cash, a fake ID, and a folded note.
