Part 2
Laura looked down at Caleb, her heart breaking at the raw vulnerability in his wide, tear-filled eyes. She knelt beside his chair, bringing herself down to his eye level, and gently placed her hands on his trembling shoulders.
"I don't know, Caleb," she said softly, keeping her voice as steady as possible. "But I promise you, Detective Harlan is the best at what he does. He is going to do everything in his power to find her. We just have to give him a little bit of time."
Caleb sniffled, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his oversized jacket. He didn't look convinced. His eyes wandered back to the glass jar sitting on the edge of the desk, the heavy silence of the office pressing down on them.
"She told me to keep it safe," Caleb whispered, his voice cracking. "She said if anything happened, the answer was inside the jar. I thought she just meant the money. I thought she wanted me to buy a bus ticket far away from Mr. Vincent."
Laura frowned, turning her gaze toward the jar. Eighty-seven dollars and forty-three cents. It was a lot of money for a child, but it wasn't enough to disappear. Not from someone like Vincent, who apparently had eyes everywhere.
She picked up the heavy glass jar, feeling the cold weight of the coins shifting inside. As she lifted it closer to the desk light, she noticed something strange. The coins didn't settle all the way to the very bottom. There was a slight discoloration at the base, a dark shadow beneath the layer of copper pennies.
"Caleb," Laura said, her maternal instincts kicking into high gear. "Did your mommy put anything else in here? Underneath the money?"
The boy shook his head slowly, his brow furrowing. "She just told me to never open it until I was safe. She poured the coins in right in front of me, but she did it really fast while Mr. Vincent was yelling at someone on the phone outside our door."
Laura’s pulse quickened. She pulled a clean sheet of paper across her desk and gently tipped the jar over. A loud, metallic cascade echoed through the small office as dozens of quarters, dimes, and pennies spilled out, rolling in every direction.
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Caleb leaned forward, his breath catching in his throat.
As the last of the pennies cleared the mouth of the jar, something else slid out. It wasn't a coin. It was a small, tightly folded piece of heavy plastic waterproof paper, wrapped securely with a thick black rubber band.
