Chapter 2 – THE BLOOD ON THE WOODEN BOX

“What are you talking about?” Richard demanded, turning his rage from me toward his son. “Tyler, put that box down. We are handling this.”

But Tyler shrank away from our father. He stumbled further into my office, holding the small wooden box against his chest like a shield. As he moved into the light, I saw dark, rusty smears across his knuckles.

Blood.

“Tyler, whose blood is that?” I asked, stepping out from behind my desk, the anger from a moment ago entirely overridden by a sudden, freezing dread.

“It’s not mine,” Tyler choked out. “Sarah, please. The men who came to the warehouse this morning… they’re not just debt collectors. They wanted the box.”

“What box?” my mother cried, running toward him. She tried to pry it from his hands, but Tyler shoved her away.

“The box from the floorboards in the old factory!” Tyler yelled, his voice cracking hysterically. “I was looking for cash! I was looking for anything to sell to pay off the bookies! But I found this instead.”

He slammed the wooden box onto my desk, right next to Arthur’s silver compass.

I stared at it. It was old, the wood splintering at the corners, held shut by a heavy brass padlock.

My father stared at the box. All the color drained from his face, leaving him looking like a ghost. He took a staggering step backward.

“Where did you find that?” Richard whispered, his voice completely devoid of its usual authority.

“Under your desk, Dad,” Tyler sobbed. “In the old wing of the manufacturing plant. The wing you had boarded up twenty-nine years ago. The wing where Arthur Whitaker died.”

The silence in the room was absolute.

I looked at my father. The man who had thrown me out like garbage. The man who had stolen a patent.

“What is inside it, Dad?” I asked softly.

“Nothing,” Richard snapped, panic flooding his eyes. “It’s junk. Tyler, give it to me right now.”

He reached for the box, but I snatched it off the desk before he could touch it. The wood felt heavy.

“Sarah, give it to me!” my father roared, reaching inside his jacket.

“Stop!” Tyler screamed, stepping between us. “If you don’t let her open it, they’ll kill me! The men said if I didn’t hand over the proof by midnight, they’d burn my house down with my wife inside!”

“Proof of what?” I demanded.

My mother was weeping hysterically by the sofa. “Richard, what is happening? What did you do?”

I looked down at the brass padlock. It was rusted, but it looked familiar. The keyhole was small and uniquely shaped.

I looked at the silver compass on my desk.

Eleanor had given it to me, but she had never let me open the small compartment at the base of the compass. She had said it was broken.

With trembling hands, I picked up the compass. I twisted the bottom compartment. It unscrewed with a soft grate of metal.

Inside, resting on a bed of faded velvet, was a small brass key.

My father let out a strangled cry. “Sarah, don’t do it. I am begging you.”

It was the first time in my life my father had ever begged me for anything.

I didn’t listen. I slid the brass key into the padlock. It turned with a heavy click.

I lifted the lid of the wooden box.

Inside was a stack of old, yellowed blueprints. The real blueprints for the valve.

But beneath them was something else.

It was a thick, braided leather belt.

And the heavy metal buckle of the belt was completely caked in dried, black blood.

I stared at it, the nausea rising in my throat. I recognized that belt. I had seen my father wear it in old family photographs from when I was a toddler.

“Dad,” I whispered, looking up at him in horror. “You didn’t just steal the patent.”

“Sarah, please,” Richard begged, tears finally spilling from his eyes.

“You murdered him,” I said, the reality crushing the breath out of my lungs. “You murdered Arthur Whitaker.”

Before anyone could move, my office phone rang, a sharp, piercing sound that made us all jump.

I slowly reached over and hit the speaker button.

“Hello?” I said.

A raspy, unfamiliar voice echoed into the room.

“Miss Mitchell. I suggest you look out your window. We’re downstairs. Bring the box to the lobby in five minutes, or we come up and start shooting.”

TITLE: The Men In The Black SUV

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