Chapter 9 - The Deputy Director's Confession
Mara kept the lamp raised like a weapon.
"You expect me to believe that?"
Kessler glanced toward the dark windows. "I expect you to stay alive long enough to verify it."
"You gave Cole my identity."
"Yes."
The admission stunned her more than denial would have.
"Why?"
"Because he already knew Evelyn had a daughter. I gave him a false location and hoped to lead him into surveillance. Naomi changed the operation without telling me. Cole found the real file through someone else."
"Convenient."
Kessler removed a small recorder from his pocket and set it on the counter.
"This contains calls between Naomi and a Meridian accountant named Victor Saye. She has been using the investigation to eliminate one faction of the network while protecting another."
Mara did not lower the lamp.
"Naomi saved my life."
"So did Cole, once, when he pulled a witness from a burning car. Monsters are not monsters every minute. That is what makes them dangerous."
He pressed play.
Naomi's voice filled the kitchen.
"The daughter cannot know Samuel survived. Keep Ward close until she leads us to the route map."
A man's voice answered. "And after?"
"After, the child becomes leverage."
The recording ended.
Mara's stomach tightened.
"It could be edited."
"It could."
"Why come to me?"
"Because Samuel escaped the hospital two hours ago. Before he vanished, he sent me one message: HARBORLIGHT."
Mara felt the paper hidden in her shoe.
Kessler watched her expression. "He gave you the sequence."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Good. Keep not knowing."
Headlights appeared at the far end of the valley road.
Kessler moved to the window. "They are early."
"Who?"
"Naomi's team. She told you she would return tomorrow morning."
Mara remembered the schedule. He was right.
Kessler opened the back door. "There is a service trail behind the barn. It leads to an old church. A blue truck is waiting."
"Why should I go with you?"
"You should not. Go alone. Trust no one carrying a badge, including me."
The front gate opened.
Mara ran upstairs, took her coat, and slipped out the back. Rain had turned the ground to mud. She crossed the barnyard as vehicles stopped in front of the house.
A voice called her name through a loudspeaker.
Naomi.
"Mara, come outside. Kessler is armed and dangerous."
Mara reached the service trail.
Behind her, a gunshot broke the night.
She did not look back.
The old church stood a mile away, abandoned among cedar trees. A blue truck waited beside the cemetery with keys under the front mat. Inside the glove box lay an envelope.
Mara opened it.
The note was in Samuel's handwriting.
HARBORLIGHT IS NOT A PLACE. IT IS A PERSON.
Beneath the note was a photograph of Naomi, younger by twenty years, standing beside Evelyn and Samuel.
A fourth person had been cut from the image.
On the back, Samuel had written:
ASK YOUR MOTHER'S LAWYER WHO STOLE THE BABY RECORD.
Mara knew only one lawyer connected to her mother: retired federal judge Miriam Shaw, owner of the safe house she had just fled.
The blue truck's radio crackled.
May you like
Cole's voice came through the speaker.
"You are finally asking the right questions," he said.
