Chapter 10 - Ten Minutes Missing
The bullet struck the wall above my father's bed.
Federal agents entered through the motel's front and bathroom doors seconds before he could climb out a window. Grant was not there. My father had fired an old revolver toward a sound in the parking lot. He claimed someone was coming to kill him. Surveillance cameras showed only a hotel maid pushing a linen cart.
He surrendered after agents used a stun device. By seven, Robert Vale was in federal custody.
I felt no relief.
"Find the photograph," I told Torres.
Agents searched my father's room, car, luggage, and cloud accounts. They found seventy-eight thousand dollars, one false passport, a prepaid phone, and instructions for crossing into Canada. There was no photograph of Ethan.
During his first interview, my father asked for immunity. Prosecutors refused. He asked for protection. They offered it in exchange for a complete statement. He asked whether I would pay for his attorney.
That was the moment Torres ended the interview.
"He is bargaining with whatever he thinks each person wants," she told me. "The story about Ethan may be bait for you."
"Or it may be true."
She did not disagree.
The official crash timeline contained a ten-minute gap.
A county traffic camera captured unit 417 entering Briar Pass at 3:40. The emergency call came at 3:43 from a motorist who saw broken guardrail. The first deputy arrived at 3:55. Paramedics reached the vehicle at 4:03.
Ethan was pronounced dead at 4:04, but the medical examiner estimated that his fatal injury occurred between 3:47 and 3:58.
I had never noticed the range. I had been told he died at the scene, and my mind translated that into instantly because instant pain was the only mercy anyone could offer.
Lily and Noah had injuries consistent with the collision. Ethan had one injury the medical examiner could not fully explain: a narrow fracture at the back of his skull. Investigators originally believed it happened when he was thrown against the door frame while trying to reach the children.
Now they opened the case again.
Search teams returned to the ravine. Beneath six months of leaves, twenty yards from the car, they found a torn strip of Ethan's blue shirt and one of his shoes. Blood traces led uphill toward the road.
He had climbed out.
He had been alive.
I sat on the edge of my hotel bed while Mara read the update. The room became airless.
"He would have tried to get help," I said. "He would have gone back for the children."
"Yes."
"Someone stopped him."
Mara sat beside me, close but not touching. She understood that touch sometimes felt like another demand.
"We will prove what happened."
"They were waiting there. This wasn't a machine killing people from far away. Someone watched him crawl out."
Grief had changed shape again. For six months, I imagined metal, rain, and silence. Now I imagined Ethan reaching the road and seeing a person he recognized.
My father agreed to a second interview.
Torres allowed me to watch from behind one-way glass. He wore an orange detention shirt. Without his formal clothes and controlled voice, he seemed ordinary. That was more terrible than if he had looked monstrous.
"Grant sent me the picture the night of the crash," he said. "It showed Ethan on his knees near the guardrail. The time stamp was 3:52. Grant wrote, Your son-in-law has one final chance to tell us where the index is."
"What did you do?" the prosecutor asked.
"I called Grant. He didn't answer. At 4:11, he called back and said Ethan refused."
"Refused what?"
"To give up the encryption password."
"Did Voss say Ethan was dead?"
"He said the problem had been resolved."
"Why did you not call police?"
My father lowered his eyes. "Because then they would know I supplied the route."
"So you protected yourself."
"I thought about Diane. Vanessa. Everything we would lose."
From behind the glass, I pressed my fist against my mouth.
He listed my mother. He listed my sister. He listed the house.
He did not list me.
The prosecutor placed a photograph of the three coffins on the table.
"And then you skipped the funeral."
"Grant demanded a meeting."
"You could have gone to police."
"I was afraid."
"Your grandson was four years old."
My father looked toward the one-way glass. He could not see me, but somehow he knew where I stood.
"I made a mistake," he said.
I left the observation room.
A mistake was forgetting an anniversary. A mistake was taking the wrong exit in rain.
My father had made a decision every hour for six months.
Priya recovered the missing photograph from his cloud cache that afternoon. It showed Ethan beside the ruined guardrail, one hand pressed to his head. He was looking toward the camera.
Behind him, half hidden by rain, was a black sedan.
The image metadata contained coordinates. The photograph had been taken from Grant Voss's phone.
May you like
But the reflection in the sedan's rear window showed a second man in the driver's seat.
Leonard Pike.
