Page 164 of The Advocate’s Ultimatum

JP noticed. “What is it?”

Sabre’s eyes remained fixed on the page in front of her. Slowly, she reached for her legal pad and flipped back several pages until she found the rough sketch of the tattoo. Sabre placed the sketch beside Rourke’s old note.

“JP.”

He leaned over. “What am I looking at? I see a handwritten phone number in the margin.”

“Look at what’s next to it. There’s a mark beside it. It’s small.”

JP picked up the note, adjusted his readers, and examined it more closely. Then he looked back at Sabre’s sketch. “It’s an exact match.”

A cold heaviness settled into Sabre’s stomach. She stared at the mark in silence. The thing that hit hardest was how unimportant it looked. It wasn’t dramatic or even hidden. It was just something he’d written in the margin almost nine years ago out of habit.

JP rotated the note. “The left side is a D. The right curve is an R.” He looked up. “Daniel Rourke.”

“No.” But even saying it, she could still see it. Now that it was there, the symbol refused to become anything else.

JP grabbed another page from the stack. Then another.

He showed them to Sabre.

The same mark appeared again, a little smaller this time. Then it scribbled near the bottom of a witness list, like shorthand or ownership.

Sabre sat back. All at once, conversations replayed differently in her mind. “It all makes sense now. Rourke remembering the ladybug. Rourke showing up at court and casually asking if Bay had talked. He also pointed us toward leads that sounded useful enough to chase. He was always calm and helpful, too helpful.”

JP spread the marked papers across on the table. “This doesn’t prove he took Hannah.”

“No,” Sabre said quietly. And somehow that made it worse because this wasn’t evidence. It was recognition. The sudden horrible realization that something impossible had been sitting in front of them the entire time.

JP tapped the sketch of Bay’s tattoo. “She carries his mark.”

Sabre closed her eyes. “Not carries. She’s been branded, conditioned, owned.”

“Are you okay?” JP asked.

She looked down at the pages spread out, at Daniel Rourke’s unconscious little symbol repeated through years of notes, and at the tattoo on Bay’s arm. Neither of them had seen until now.

“No,” she admitted softly. “I’m not.”

JP nodded. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to be wrong about Rourke.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment because they both knew she wasn’t.

Finally, Sabre said, “We need to find Hannah, if that’s her. And even if it isn’t, he’s apparently been keeping Bay and another girl hostage. And we need to report this to the police.”

“I’ll call DuBois. He’ll know what to do.”

~~~

DuBois arrived at JP’s house thirty-five minutes later. They sat at the dining table where the paperwork was laid out.

“What exactly do you think you know?” DuBois asked.

JP explained everything from the beginning, the symbol, Bay’s tattoo, the matching marks in Rourke’s old notes, Bay confirming a blonde girl existed, and her fear about identifying the man she lived with.

“So, you think Rourke took Hannah Caldwell?” DuBois seemed skeptical.