Taking Ethan to school.
Visiting the cemetery where our parents were buried.
One photograph showed me asleep in my car during a lunch break.
I stared at it until Harrison gently took it away.
“This wasn’t medical,” he said.
“No.”
“They were monitoring us.”
“Yes.”
“Why Ethan?”
Harrison’s answer came slowly.
“To control your routine.”
I understood.
Doctor appointments.
Monthly prescriptions.
Hospital visits.
Predictable locations.
Ethan’s illness had turned my life into a schedule.
Someone always knew where I would be.
Even three weeks earlier.
At St. Jude.
The blood donation.
I looked at Harrison.
“That day.”
He understood immediately.
“My prescription pickup.”
He nodded.
“The pharmacy called me.”
“When?”
“Two hours before your arrival.”
Harrison was already dialing.
The pharmacist who supposedly called me had been off work that day.
The hospital’s system showed no automatic pickup notification.
Someone had manually entered it.
Someone had wanted me inside St. Jude at exactly the time Harrison arrived bleeding to death.
I stared at him.
“This wasn’t coincidence.”
“No.”
“Then someone knew your car would crash.”
“Yes.”
“And knew you would need blood?”
His expression darkened.
“Or knew there was a reasonable chance.”
My blood ran cold.
“Why bring me there?”
“That,” Harrison said, “is what scares me.”
The attempt on Harrison’s life had originally been classified as a traffic accident.
It wasn’t.
His armored sedan lost steering control on Interstate 95.
Investigators now discovered the electronic steering module had been remotely disabled.
Harrison’s driver died instantly.
Harrison suffered internal bleeding.
He barely reached St. Jude alive.
Someone had tried to kill him.
And someone else—or perhaps the same person—had made certain I was nearby.
That night, Harrison came to Ethan’s room carrying another folder.
Ethan was asleep.
For the first time, I noticed how exhausted Harrison looked.
“You have children?” I asked.
“One daughter.”
“How old?”
“Thirty.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to decide whether you wanted any part of this before your name became gossip at Thanksgiving.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
Harrison looked toward Ethan.
“Daniel talked about you.”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“He carried a photograph.”
“Of me?”
“You and Ethan.”
Harrison reached into his wallet.
The picture was worn.
Me at nine.
Ethan at two.
Our father holding both of us beside a lake.
I recognized it.
There had been another copy on our refrigerator.
“He had this when he died?”
“Yes.”
I touched the photograph.
“What did he say?”
Harrison smiled faintly.
“He said you were stubborn.”
“I was nine.”
“You were apparently advanced.”
I laughed softly.
Then Harrison’s face changed.
“He also asked me something the night before he died.”
“What?”
“If anything happened to him, he made me promise I’d protect his children.”
Anger rose unexpectedly.
“You didn’t.”
He absorbed it without flinching.
“You’re right.”
“You let us spend twelve years thinking we were alone.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I searched.”
“Not hard enough.”
Pain flashed across his face.
Good.
I wanted him hurt.
I hated myself for it.
“I searched for three years,” Harrison said. “Every official record said you and Ethan died six months after your parents.”
I stared.
“What?”
He handed me two certificates.
Claire Elizabeth Parker.
Ethan Daniel Parker.
Legally deceased.
The date was March 2015.
Cause:
Residential fire.
Location:
West Virginia.
I whispered, “We lived in Richmond.”
“I know.”
Someone hadn’t merely hidden us.
Someone had erased us.
Two days later, Harrison brought me to Cole Strategic Systems headquarters outside Washington.
The building looked less like a corporation than a government fortress.
Glass.
Steel.
Security checkpoints.
Biometric scanners.
Nobody smiled.
We entered through an underground garage.
In a secure room on the fourteenth floor sat General Adrian Wren.
Eighty-one years old.
Silver hair.
Straight posture.
Clear blue eyes.
I had seen him on television since childhood.
He stood when I entered.
For several seconds he simply stared.
Then he whispered:
“Daniel’s daughter.”
Harrison didn’t sit.
“Tell her.”
Wren looked at him.
“Harrison.”
“Tell her everything.”
I folded my arms.
“I’m tired of men deciding which parts of my family I’m allowed to know.”
Wren’s face tightened.
“Fair.”
He opened a leather briefcase.
Inside was a small black notebook.
My father’s handwriting filled the pages.
I knew it immediately.
His letters had a strange backward slant.
My fingers began shaking.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your mother gave it to me.”
The room stopped.
“When?”
“November 2014.”
Two months after Dad died.
One month after my parents supposedly died together.
