Chapter 5 - Page Seven
The masked man hit the floor in a crouch.
Sarah raised her weapon.
“Don’t move!”
He threw something metallic across the room.
A blinding flash exploded.
Emma covered her eyes as the warehouse filled with white light and a deafening crack. Someone slammed into her shoulder. Robert’s letter tore from her hands.
She dropped to one knee.
Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Sarah shouting.
A gunshot followed.
Then another.
Emma crawled toward the table, blinking against tears. Shapes moved through the red emergency light.
The masked intruder ran toward the rear corridor with the letter.
Margaret was on the floor near the wall.
Sarah pursued him.
Emma saw the photograph lying where the intruder had landed. She snatched it up.
Her father appeared younger than she remembered, perhaps thirty-five. He stood beside Vivian Mercer at a groundbreaking ceremony. A banner behind them read:
HALE-MERCER COMMUNITY HOUSING INITIATIVE
Emma had never heard of the project.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written a date.
October 14, 1998.
One week before Emma’s mother disappeared.
Thomas had always told Emma her mother abandoned them when Emma was five. There were no photographs of her after that year, no letters, no phone calls.
Emma had spent decades believing she was unwanted.
Now Vivian’s presence in the image made that old wound feel newly manufactured.
Sarah returned alone.
“He escaped through the loading bay.”
“The building was locked.”
“He had internal access.”
One of the state investigators appeared from the corridor holding his bleeding arm.
“The rear door opened electronically.”
Sarah looked toward the security station.
Someone had hacked the system.
Margaret pushed herself up.
“The letter.”
“He took it,” Emma said.
Margaret’s face crumpled.
Sarah’s gaze dropped to the photograph.
“Where did you get that?”
“He carried it.”
Sarah examined the image.
“Hale-Mercer Community Housing,” she read. “That project doesn’t appear in any current records.”
Emma turned to Margaret.
“Did my father work with Vivian?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew Robert had seven pages.”
Margaret looked frightened.
“I never said there were seven.”
“The anonymous sender did.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
“What was on the missing page?”
Margaret sank into a chair.
“Robert wrote that Thomas had an affair.”
Emma felt the blow physically.
“With Vivian?”
“No.”
“Then with whom?”
Margaret covered her mouth.
“Your mother.”
Emma stared at her.
“My father was married to my mother.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Thomas Hale wasn’t your biological father.”
The warehouse went silent.
Emma looked again at the photograph.
Her father’s familiar smile suddenly belonged to a stranger.
“No,” she said.
“Robert believed your biological father was Charles Mercer.”
Emma dropped the photograph.
For a second, the world ceased to make sense.
Charles Mercer.
Daniel’s father.
If true, Daniel was not merely her husband.
He was her half-brother.
Nausea surged through her.
Sarah caught her before she fell.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
Emma pushed away.
“This is a lie.”
“It may be,” Sarah said. “Robert could have been mistaken.”
“Margaret knew.”
“I found page seven after Robert died,” Margaret whispered. “I tore it away because I couldn’t let you learn it without proof.”
“You let me stay married to him.”
“I ordered a private DNA test.”
Emma turned sharply.
“How?”
“I used a wineglass from a family dinner and a hair from your coat.”
The violation barely registered beside the larger horror.
“What did it show?”
“The samples were not a sibling match.”
Emma inhaled for the first time.
“But?”
“But the Mercer sample wasn’t Daniel’s. I later realized I had taken Nathan’s glass.”
“And Nathan?”
“The result showed a possible first-cousin relationship, not a sibling relationship. It made no sense.”
Sarah picked up the photograph.
“It might mean Charles isn’t Nathan’s biological father. Or the sample was contaminated. We need proper testing.”
Emma pressed both palms against the cold table.
Every family story had fractured.
Her father’s death.
Her mother’s disappearance.
Her marriage.
Even Daniel and Nathan’s relationship to each other.
The anonymous sender knew about page seven.
The intruder knew Sarah had not seen it.
Someone was controlling which truths reached Emma and when.
“Who besides you read the missing page?” Sarah asked.
“Vivian,” Margaret said.
“How?”
“She found me with the letter after Robert’s funeral. I told her I had destroyed it, but she saw page seven.”
“Did Daniel see it?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma thought of Daniel’s phone call.
Your father was not the man you think he was.
He knew something.
A TBI officer entered.
“We found the intruder’s exit point. There’s blood on the ladder.”
“Collect it,” Sarah said. “And pull traffic cameras from every surrounding street.”
The officer hesitated.
“There’s another problem. Someone accessed our case server during the blackout.”
Sarah went still.
“What was taken?”
“The witness location.”
“Which witness?”
“Frank Dorsey.”
The mechanic.
The man who could connect Charles Mercer to Thomas Hale’s death.
Sarah grabbed her phone.
No answer.
She tried again.
Still nothing.
“We move now,” she said.
Emma blocked her path.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“That man knows what happened to my father.”
“He may also be the target of an armed extraction team.”
“I’m still coming.”
Sarah looked ready to argue, then saw Emma’s expression.
“Stay close and follow every instruction.”
Margaret rose.
“I’m going too.”
“No,” Emma said.
Margaret stopped.
“You lied to me for years. I don’t know whether you’re protecting me or protecting yourself.”
Pain crossed Margaret’s face.
Emma could not afford to comfort her.
Sarah assigned two officers to remain with Margaret while she and Emma left through a secured side exit.
They traveled in an unmarked truck.
Rain began falling as they drove east.
Frank Dorsey had been placed in a rural motel under an assumed name. Two agents were supposed to guard him.
When they arrived, one agent lay unconscious beside the ice machine.
The second was missing.
Room 14 stood open.
Sarah entered first.
The lamp had been knocked over. Blood streaked the carpet.
Frank Dorsey sat against the bed, clutching his side.
He was in his sixties, thin and gray, with grease permanently embedded beneath his nails.
Emma knelt beside him.
“Who did this?”
His eyes focused on her.
“Thomas’s girl.”
“You knew my father?”
“I killed him.”
The confession emptied the air from the room.
Sarah applied pressure to his wound.
“Who hired you?”
Frank coughed.
“Charles gave the order.”
Emma’s vision blurred.
“And Vivian?”
“Vivian tried to stop it.”
That did not fit.
The woman who had humiliated Emma, framed her, and helped steal millions had tried to save Thomas?
“Why?” Emma asked.
Frank looked at her as though the answer should have been obvious.
“Because Thomas was the only man she ever loved.”
A floorboard creaked outside.
Sarah turned.
The missing guard appeared in the doorway.
May you like
He raised his gun.
Frank shoved Emma behind the bed as the first bullet tore through the motel room.
