The room shifted again from grief to motion. If Sterling might be alive, then every delay mattered differently now.
But we still did not know where to look.
We sat in frustrated silence until Elias asked, “Did Sterling leave you anything else unusual? A gift, a phrase, anything that felt strange at the time?”
I shook my head at first. Then remembered.
“The cactus.”
Jordan blinked. “What cactus?”
“For my birthday. About a month before he disappeared. He gave me this little cactus in a clay pot. No flowers, no jewelry. Just a cactus. He said it stood for endurance, for surviving harsh places.”
“Where is it now?”
“I took it when I left. It’s on the windowsill.”
Elias stood up immediately.
The cactus sat where I had set it the day before, small and stubborn, red bloom at the crown, thorns along the ribs. He picked it up, studied it from several angles, then called me over.
“Look here.”
One of the spines near the base was slightly darker and duller than the others.
Using tweezers from a small tool kit he kept in his bag, Elias worked it loose with patient fingers.
It was not a spine.
It was a tiny metal capsule no bigger than the segment of a fingernail.
Inside was a tracking chip.
My mouth fell open.
Jordan whispered, “Sterling.”
Elias connected the device to his laptop and worked through several screens until a map appeared. A red dot blinked to life.
Not in Atlanta.
Not in Alpharetta.
Western North Carolina.
Near Asheville.
Jordan and I stared at the screen.
At that exact moment, her phone rang.
Private clinic, Asheville, North Carolina, the display read.
She answered on speaker. A nurse’s calm voice informed her that Celeste Vance had been in a serious traffic accident and was receiving emergency treatment. A family member needed to come as soon as possible to handle paperwork.
Jordan looked at me while the nurse was still talking.
The coincidence was too neat. Too ugly.
When the call ended, the room seemed to shrink around us.
“It’s a trap,” I said.
Jordan swallowed hard. “I know.”
But Celeste was still her mother, and that mattered in ways even deep bitterness could not erase.
“I have to go,” she said.
I wanted to tell her not to. I wanted to grab her coat and throw it across the room. Instead I said, “Then you do not go alone.”
She shook her head. “If it is a trap, extra people may make it worse. I’ll go. Elias stays here with you. The second I know anything, I call.”
She was already moving, already reaching for her keys.
I caught her wrist.
“Be careful.”
She nodded once and left.
The door shut behind her, and dread moved into the room like a weather front.
After Jordan left, Elias and I kept staring at the blinking dot near Asheville as if staring hard enough might answer the questions crowding the room.
The location did not fit the life Sterling had lived. It was too remote, too strange, and too perfectly timed with the fake clinic call for Celeste’s so-called accident. If the chip was current, then somewhere in that rugged stretch of western North Carolina, among the ridges and winding roads and hidden properties beyond the tourist parts of town, there might be a place Victor considered secure.
There might be a place where Sterling had been kept.
Elias called Jordan once. Then again. Then a third time.
No answer.
On the fourth try, her phone went straight to voicemail.
“Damn it.”
