Chapter 6 — The Garage
The garage stood behind an abandoned gas station forty miles outside Chicago.
Its windows were covered with metal panels. Weeds grew through cracks in the pavement. A faded sign read MILLER PERFORMANCE REPAIR, though the business had supposedly closed five years earlier.
Detective Hale obtained a warrant before sunrise.
Inside, investigators found no ordinary repair shop.
There were diagnostic computers, encrypted hard drives, unregistered vehicle parts, and shelves filled with electronic control modules taken from Cole Automotive prototypes.
At the back of the building, beneath a tarp, they discovered the remains of Ava’s sedan.
The salvage company had never destroyed it.
Margaret had hidden it.
Ava insisted on seeing the vehicle.
Ethan objected at first, then remembered her words.
You don’t get to decide for me.
So they went together.
The twisted metal looked smaller than Ava remembered.
The passenger side had collapsed inward. The roof had been cut away by rescue workers. Brown stains covered the driver’s seat where Samuel had died.
Maya Price stood beside the wreckage.
She touched the door gently.
“My dad was right there.”
Ava reached for her hand.
“I’m sorry.”
Maya looked at her.
“He stayed with you.”
Ava swallowed.
“I remember.”
The memory came back slowly.
Rain.
Broken glass.
Samuel struggling to breathe.
Ava crying that she could not feel her legs.
Samuel reaching backward through the crushed seats and saying, “Don’t close your eyes, Mrs. Cole.”
He had remained conscious long enough to keep her alive.
A forensic mechanic examined the brake system.
“This wasn’t a defective line,” he said.
He held up a small device attached near the hydraulic assembly.
“It’s a remote pressure-release mechanism.”
Ethan stared at it.
“Someone could disable the brakes from another vehicle?”
“Within a few hundred yards.”
“The dark SUV,” Maya whispered.
Investigators recovered partial data from the sedan’s damaged onboard computer.
At 12:42 a.m., the brakes lost pressure.
At 12:42 and eleven seconds, Samuel attempted to downshift.
At 12:42 and nineteen seconds, the vehicle struck the guardrail.
But another log appeared six minutes earlier.
The car had received a wireless command from a device registered to a Cole Automotive testing unit.
That testing unit had been assigned to Victor Lang.
Hale ordered Victor’s arrest.
But when police reached Victor’s condominium, he was gone.
His closets were empty.
His passport remained in a drawer, but surveillance cameras showed him leaving through the service entrance carrying a laptop bag.
Margaret denied knowing his location.
Daniel claimed Victor owned a private cabin in Wisconsin.
By the time police arrived, the cabin was burning.
Firefighters rescued no one.
Among the ashes, investigators found a body.
For several hours, everyone believed Victor had died.
Then dental records revealed the corpse belonged to a homeless man reported missing two days earlier.
Victor had staged his death.
That evening, Ava received a message from an unknown number.
Stop digging, or Ethan will finish what you survived.
Attached was a photograph of Ethan leaving the hospital.
A red circle had been drawn around his head.
Ethan demanded immediate protection for Ava.
Ava demanded protection for Maya and Lena too.
“They are witnesses,” she said. “Victor will know that.”
Hale stationed officers at the mansion.
But Lena refused to stay there.
“I have a younger brother,” she explained. “He lives with my aunt. I need to know he’s safe.”
Ethan arranged security.
At midnight, Lena called Ava from her aunt’s house.
Her voice shook.
“Someone was here.”
“What happened?”
“There was an envelope on the kitchen table.”
“Did you open it?”
“Yes.”
Inside was a photograph taken eighteen months earlier.
It showed Lena standing outside the hospital after Ava’s crash.
On the back, someone had written:
YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER ME.
Ava frowned.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
Lena began crying.
“Because I was at the garage that night.”
