Chapter 4 - The Man Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The emergency lights flickered on.
Marcus was gone.
The leather bag was gone with him.
Arthur lay on the floor.
Blood covered his shirt.
“Dad!”
Bella’s scream echoed through the corridor.
Her voice was clear.
Terrified.
Alive.
I dropped beside Arthur.
The bullet had grazed his shoulder.
He was conscious, but barely.
“Marcus took the drives,” I said.
Arthur grabbed my wrist.
“The notebook.”
I looked toward the open locker.
The black bag was gone.
But the notebook had fallen beneath the metal door.
I slipped it inside my coat before the station security guards arrived.
At the hospital, Arthur’s wound was treated under a false name.
His lawyers warned him not to involve local police.
Evelyn’s letter had named the police commissioner.
No one knew who could be trusted.
At three in the morning, Bella fell asleep against my shoulder.
Arthur looked at her from his bed.
“She spoke.”
“She was afraid you were dying.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“I spent two years believing she couldn’t speak.”
“She could.”
He looked at me again.
“She chose not to.”
“Maybe silence was the only thing she could control.”
That answer hurt him.
Good.
It needed to.
I pulled Evelyn’s notebook from beneath my coat.
Arthur sat up despite the pain.
Most of the pages contained dates, account numbers, and names written in code.
But the final page held one sentence.
Richard Sterling ordered the accident.
Arthur stared at the name.
“My father.”
“You said he was dead.”
“He died six months before Evelyn.”
I turned the page.
A photograph had been taped inside the back cover.
It showed an older man stepping out of a car in Montreal.
The date printed in the corner was only three months old.
Arthur’s father was alive.
May you like
And standing beside him was Vanessa.
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