Chapter 7 - THE BROTHER WHO NEVER DIED
They escaped through the dormer window.
Jessica remembered an old maintenance ladder running down the east side of the house.
By the time Robert’s men reached the attic, Colleen and Jessica were running barefoot across wet grass.
Ethan picked them up three streets away.
Inside his car, Colleen showed him the photograph.
He nearly drove onto the shoulder.
“2018?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Then Daniel didn’t die in 2001.”
Jessica shook her head.
“Robert held a funeral.”
“Closed casket?”
Jessica thought.
“Yes.”
Ethan looked grim.
“That tells us plenty.”
The address on the photograph led to an abandoned veterinary clinic in Pennsylvania.
They arrived just before sunset.
Windows boarded.
Parking lot cracked with weeds.
Maya had stayed home, repeatedly texting Colleen that this was “the dumbest field trip in American history.”
Ethan forced the side door.
Inside, dust coated everything.
Jessica whispered, “Nobody’s been here for years.”
Colleen found a staircase.
Downstairs was a basement apartment.
Unlike the clinic upstairs, this room had been used recently.
A blanket lay folded on a cot.
Canned food filled a shelf.
A battery radio sat beside an old coffee mug.
Then Colleen saw the wall.
Photographs.
Hundreds of them.
Robert entering offices.
Robert meeting politicians.
Robert shaking hands with judges.
Jessica at charity events.
Colleen leaving her apartment.
Colleen pushing her hotel cart.
Colleen’s stomach dropped.
“He was watching me.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“Not Robert.”
“How do you know?”
Ethan pointed.
Several photographs showed Robert himself being followed from a distance.
Someone had been tracking all of them.
Jessica touched a photograph of a gray-haired man walking through a train station.
“Daniel.”
Colleen turned.
“You’re sure?”
Jessica nodded.
“Older, but yes.”
The floor creaked upstairs.
Everyone went still.
Ethan whispered, “We’re not alone.”
A shadow crossed beneath the basement door.
Colleen picked up a metal flashlight.
The door opened.
A gray-haired man stood there.
Thin.
Scar running from his temple to his jaw.
A snake ring wrapped around one finger.
Colleen’s heart stopped.
Daniel Langford stared at her.
His eyes filled with tears.
“You look exactly like your mother.”
Colleen couldn’t speak.
Daniel came down one step.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For disappearing.”
“For leaving Evelyn alone.”
“For leaving you.”
Colleen’s anger returned faster than her shock.
“You've been alive this entire time?”
Daniel nodded.
“Robert made sure I couldn’t come back.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked toward Jessica.
“Because I knew how our father really died.”
A car door slammed outside.
Daniel’s face changed.
“Lights off.”
Ethan moved toward the window.
Three black SUVs rolled into the parking lot.
Daniel whispered, “Robert found us.”
Then he pulled open a hidden cabinet.
May you like
Inside were rifles, passports, cash—
and a sealed envelope with Colleen’s name written across it in her mother’s handwriting.
