Chapter 7 - The Boy They Mistook for My Brother
The person Breck Howerin’s men took was eighteen-year-old Lucas Bell.
No relation to Marco.
He was Tobin’s lab partner, roughly the same height, same dark jacket, same black backpack. He had borrowed Tobin’s motorcycle helmet because his own visor was cracked.
That mistake saved my brother.
It nearly destroyed someone else’s family.
Lucas’s mother called the school at 9:14 because he never arrived at work. Security footage showed two men approaching him beside the vocational building. One flashed something that looked like a badge. Lucas followed them voluntarily.
The vehicle was a gray utility van with stolen plates.
I listened to the facts in the garage office while my body tried to turn guilt into action.
“This is because of us,” I said.
Naomi shook her head.
“This is because of the people who took him.”
“They wanted Tobin.”
“That does not make their crime yours.”
I hated the sentence because it was correct and did nothing to make me feel better.
Dante was already on the phone.
His voice changed when he spoke to his people. It lost every trace of the dry humor I had seen in the garage. He did not raise it. That would have been less frightening.
“Find the van,” he said. “Do not touch anyone if police are present. I want location, not revenge.”
He ended the call.
I stared at him.
“You had to specify no revenge?”
“Yes.”
“That is deeply reassuring.”
“It should be. I specified.”
Tobin paced by the office window.
“I should go home.”
“No,” I said.
“I’m not hiding here forever.”
“Today you are.”
His jaw set.
Dad’s letter flashed in my mind.
Do not let your sister decide what courage looks like for you.
I hated dead men who remained capable of winning arguments.
I exhaled.
“What do you want to do?”
Tobin stopped.
“Help find Lucas.”
“How?”
“He wears a location tag on his hearing-protection case. We use them in the lab because equipment gets mixed up.”
Everyone turned toward him.
“You can track it?” Marco asked.
“If the battery’s alive.”
Tobin opened an app.
A blue dot appeared near an industrial strip by the river.
Naomi immediately called investigators.
Dante did not send his men ahead.
I noticed.
That mattered.
Within forty minutes, state police located the utility van behind an abandoned printing warehouse. Lucas was inside, frightened but physically unharmed. The men who took him fled through a rear loading area and were arrested two blocks away after one tried to hide in a dumpster.
Lucas told police they kept asking about “the book” and “the Ashb evidence.”
He told them he was not Tobin.
They thought he was lying.
When Lucas’s mother arrived at the hospital, she hugged him so hard he complained about breathing.
Then she looked at me.
I expected anger.
I deserved some version of it even if Naomi said otherwise.
Instead she said, “Your brother figured out where he was.”
“Yes.”
“Then thank him for me.”
I started crying in the hospital parking lot.
Not delicately.
Not the single cinematic tear people produce in movies.
I bent over beside a concrete planter and sobbed until breathing hurt.
Dante stood six feet away.
He did not touch me.
That was the right choice.
When I finally straightened, he held out a clean handkerchief.
“Do people still carry these?” I asked.
“My tailor is eighty.”
I took it.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We stood in silence.
Then I said, “I almost got a kid taken because I reopened Dad’s case.”
“No.”
“Naomi already gave me the speech.”
“Then she was right.”
“I dislike how often that happens.”
Dante looked toward the hospital doors.
“Howerin escalated because evidence exists. If you had never touched the notebook, he would still be the man who burned your father’s garage and believed he got away with it.”
I looked at him.
“You believe he ordered the fire.”
“Yes.”
“You have for three years?”
“Yes.”
“Why wasn’t he stopped?”
A long pause.
“Because I tried to stop him the way I knew how.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I threatened his money, his routes, his partners. I made him smaller. I thought if I boxed him in, he would become harmless.”
“And?”
“I was wrong.”
The admission sounded expensive.
“Why not go to the police?”
Dante gave me a look.
“You saw the name on the fire report.”
“Corrupt people are not the same as every person in law enforcement.”
“I know that now.”
“Didn’t then?”
“I was raised differently.”
That was the first honest sentence he gave me about himself.
Not mafia boss. Not businessman. Raised differently.
That evening, I returned to the garage with Tobin.
We found the rolling door painted with a red symbol.
A circle crossed by one diagonal line.
Tobin stared at it.
“What does that mean?”
Dante, behind us, went still.
“You know,” I said.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“It means final warning.”
I looked at the garage.
Dad’s sign.
The pegboard.
The unfinished Chevelle.
The place where my life had narrowed for three years until saving it felt identical to living.
Then I looked at Tobin.
“Pack the important tools.”
His eyes widened.
“You’re closing?”
“For one night.”
Dante said nothing.
I pointed at him.
“Do not look pleased.”
“I’m attempting neutrality.”
“You’re bad at it.”
We moved the evidence, computers, customer keys, and anything irreplaceable to a secure storage facility Naomi arranged.
At 1:08 in the morning, the alarm company called.
Ashb Auto’s heat sensor had triggered.
By the time we reached the block, orange light was already climbing behind the windows.
For the second time in three years, my father’s garage was on fire.
The morning after the fire, I found Bruno—Ruthie’s elderly mutt, not my dog—sleeping beneath the temporary awning someone had erected beside the garage. Ruthie claimed he had escaped her yard. I suspected she had brought him because she thought a dog could keep me from staring at the ruins alone.
It worked.
I sat on an overturned bucket and shared half a stale muffin with him while firefighters finished their final inspection.
Across the street, three reporters waited behind yellow tape. One shouted my name.
I ignored him.
Another called, “Ms. Ashb, do you believe organized crime is involved?”
I looked at the smoking roof.
For years, I would have answered too quickly. I would have said yes because it felt true. Or no because I was afraid.
Instead I said, “I believe the investigators should follow the evidence.”
Dante, standing several feet behind me, smiled.
“Do not look proud,” I said.
“I said nothing.”
“You have an expressive silence.”
Later, Tobin and I walked the perimeter together. He stopped at the place where the old back door used to be.
“I used to think if we rebuilt it exactly the same, Dad would still know where everything was,” he said.
I swallowed.
“Me too.”
“What if we don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Rebuild it the same.”
That possibility scared me more than it should have.
Then I realized why.
Changing the garage felt like admitting Dad was not coming back to use it.
Tobin must have seen the answer on my face.
“He already knows,” he said quietly.
I looked at the burned wall.
May you like
For the first time, rebuilding stopped meaning restoration.
It began to mean survival.
