Chapter Six: The Wrong Destination
Adrian arranged for two drivers to take the youngest children to a public library several miles away.
The remaining vehicles stayed near the diner while the adults waited for a response from emergency services.
Emily went inside to retrieve her coat from the staff locker.
Grant stood beside the office door, speaking in a low voice on his phone.
He ended the call when he saw her.
“You should have gone home,” he said.
“I only came for my coat,” Emily replied.
Grant glanced toward the front windows.
“Those people don’t know what they’re getting into,” he said.
“Do you?” Emily asked.
He rubbed his forehead.
“The man who rented the lot told me he was moving families out of a dangerous building,” he answered.
“He paid cash and asked me not to mention it.”
“Why did you agree?”
“Because I was behind on rent,” Grant said.
Emily had never heard him admit that the diner was struggling.
He usually blamed slow business on employees who gave away too much coffee.
“Did you know where the buses were going?” she asked.
Grant opened his mouth, then closed it.
Emily waited.
“He said the passengers would be taken to a temporary housing center,” Grant answered.
“He showed me a brochure.”
“Do you still have it?”
Grant hesitated before opening the office drawer.
He handed her a glossy sheet with a photograph of a modern apartment building.
The building’s name was printed in large blue letters.
Emily recognized it from an advertisement she had seen on a bus shelter.
The apartments were not temporary housing.
They were an unfinished private development on the other side of the city.
“This place isn’t open,” she said.
Grant stared at the brochure.
“He told me the first floor was ready.”
Emily turned the sheet over.
A handwritten time had been written beside the phone number.
It matched the hour when the bus had arrived.
She held the brochure out to him.
“You need to tell the responders everything,” she said.
“I could lose the diner,” Grant whispered.
“People could lose more than that,” Emily replied.
Grant looked toward the door and made his decision.
He took the brochure back, stepped outside, and walked toward Samuel.
Chapter Seven: The Freight Yard
The first patrol car arrived twenty minutes later.
A county deputy named Mara Kent listened while Nadia played Lucia’s message.
She asked each witness separate questions and wrote down the details without promising an immediate rescue.
Emily described the missing gate, the gravel road, and the blue-roofed warehouse.
Grant admitted that he had accepted cash to allow an unregistered bus to use his property.
Deputy Kent called for a second unit and a supervisor.
Then she turned toward Samuel.
“You need to keep your convoy here,” she said.
“No one is going into that yard until we know what we’re facing.”
Samuel nodded.
Nadia did not.
“My daughter is there,” she said.
“I understand,” Kent replied.
“That is why I am not sending you into a place where we cannot protect you.”
Emily watched Nadia grip the car door until her knuckles whitened.
She wanted to offer reassurance, but she had no reason to promise that Lucia was safe.
Instead, she asked Nadia whether she had eaten breakfast.
Nadia shook her head.
Emily went inside and made two sandwiches from the ingredients she had bought for herself.
She returned with the food wrapped in clean napkins.
“I can’t swallow anything,” Nadia said.
“Then keep it for later,” Emily replied.
A radio crackled near the patrol car.
Kent listened and looked sharply toward the freight yard.
“A bus just left the east gate,” she told her partner.
“The driver refused to stop for a traffic officer.”
Nadia stepped forward.
“Was my daughter inside?”
“We don’t know yet,” Kent said.
The deputy ran to her vehicle.
Within seconds, both patrol cars had left the diner with their lights flashing.
The convoy remained in the parking lot.
For the first time since the twelve SUVs arrived, nobody seemed to know what to do next.
