Chapter 2 - The Men in the Mirror
Jack shoved open the swinging kitchen door.
“Back exit!”
Lena stumbled behind him, nearly colliding with Carlos at the grill.
“Hey!”
“Sorry!”
“What’s happening?”
“No time.”
That answer came from Jack.
Carlos raised the spatula like a weapon.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Someone trying to keep her alive.”
That silenced him.
For approximately half a second.
Then the front door slammed.
Lena heard somebody shout her name.
Not “waitress.”
Not “miss.”
“Lena!”
Her blood turned cold.
Jack pushed her toward the rear hallway.
“They know.”
“You said they were watching me!”
“They were confirming.”
“Confirming what?”
“That you're Daniel Harper's daughter.”
They burst through the rear door.
Sunlight blinded her.
The alley behind Bellhaven Diner smelled of hot asphalt and cooking grease. Dumpsters lined one wall. Lena's faded blue Honda sat across the employee lot.
She headed toward it.
Jack caught her elbow.
“Not your car.”
“Stop grabbing me!”
“Your car may be tracked.”
“My car is fifteen years old!”
“Tracking devices don't care.”
The rear door crashed open.
Jack pulled Lena behind the dumpster.
A man emerged.
The younger one.
His right hand disappeared beneath his jacket.
Lena stopped breathing.
Jack whispered, “When I move, get into the truck.”
“What truck?”
He pointed.
A black pickup waited beside the alley.
“You expect me to get into a stranger's truck?”
“Yes.”
“That is literally how people get murdered.”
Jack almost smiled.
“Fair point.”
The man came closer.
Jack stepped into view.
“Morning, Curtis.”
The stranger froze.
Lena stared at Jack.
So much for not knowing them.
Curtis lowered his hand.
“Mercer.”
“Been a while.”
“Not long enough.”
“You always were sentimental.”
“Move away from the girl.”
“No.”
“Not your decision.”
Jack's posture changed.
He didn't look like an aging biker anymore.
He looked like a man who knew exactly how much distance separated him from danger.
“You tell Vale he doesn't get another Harper.”
Curtis's expression hardened.
Lena understood only one thing.
They knew her family.
Curtis took another step.
Jack moved.
Everything happened too fast.
He knocked Curtis's arm sideways just as the man pulled something from his jacket.
A handgun.
Lena screamed.
Jack slammed Curtis against the brick wall.
The gun hit the pavement.
“Truck!” Jack shouted.
Lena ran.
The second man appeared at the diner door.
She reached the pickup, yanked open the passenger side, and climbed inside.
Jack came seconds later.
The engine roared.
They shot out of the alley.
Lena twisted around.
Curtis stood in the road watching them.
He wasn't chasing.
That frightened her more.
“Who are they?”
Jack accelerated.
“People your father spent seventeen years hiding from.”
“You knew that man.”
“Yes.”
“You lied.”
“I omitted.”
“That's lying with better grammar!”
“Fair.”
“Stop the truck.”
“No.”
“Stop!”
“No.”
Lena grabbed the door handle.
Jack slammed the locks.
“Don't.”
“You kidnapped me!”
“I rescued you.”
“You pulled a gunfight into my workplace!”
“He brought the gun.”
“Stop the truck!”
Jack drove another half mile before pulling into an abandoned gas station.
Lena jumped out.
She immediately called 911.
Jack made no attempt to stop her.
The dispatcher answered.
Lena opened her mouth.
Then Jack held up the photograph.
Her parents smiled at her from seventeen years of impossible history.
“Ma'am?” the dispatcher asked. “What's your emergency?”
Lena stared at Jack.
He said quietly, “Ask them for Sheriff Nolan.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
“Just ask.”
She did.
The dispatcher hesitated.
“Sheriff Nolan isn't available.”
“When will he be?”
Another pause.
“I can't say.”
Jack's expression told her everything.
Lena ended the call.
“You think Nolan's involved?”
“I think you shouldn't tell anyone where you are until we know who isn't.”
“Nolan knew my father.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Everybody knew Daniel.”
“No. Everybody in Bellhaven knew him as a mechanic.”
Jack leaned against the truck.
“Your father wasn't a mechanic.”
The lies kept coming.
Each one stripped another piece from Lena's childhood.
“What was he?”
Jack looked toward the road.
“A financial investigator.”
She laughed.
She couldn't help it.
“My dad fixed transmissions.”
“He did that too.”
“For who?”
“Originally? Federal contractors. Later, himself.”
“This is insane.”
“He found something.”
“What?”
“A network of shell companies moving money through construction firms, charities, trucking companies, casinos. Daniel discovered the same names appearing everywhere.”
“Vale?”
Jack looked at her.
“You heard me say that.”
“Who is he?”
“Gideon Vale.”
The name meant nothing.
“He was respectable,” Jack continued. “Businessman. Philanthropist. The kind of man who donated hospital wings while destroying people who got too close to his money.”
“And my father?”
“Got too close.”
Lena folded her arms.
“So he faked his death?”
“Yes.”
“And abandoned us?”
Jack's face tightened.
“He didn't abandon you.”
“I went to his funeral.”
“He watched it.”
Lena stared at him.
“What?”
“From a hill beyond the cemetery.”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the empty gas station.
Jack didn't move.
Lena's hand burned.
“He watched?”
“Yes.”
“I was twelve.”
“I know.”
“I was crying over an empty coffin and he watched?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't he come to me?”
“Because three men were watching you cry.”
Her anger faltered.
Jack continued quietly.
“Daniel wanted to run to you. I held him back.”
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I helped him disappear.”
Lena stepped away.
The world seemed too bright.
Too ordinary.
Cars passed on the highway.
Somebody somewhere was mowing grass.
Life continued while hers collapsed.
“My mother knew?”
“Yes.”
“All these years?”
“Until she died.”
Claire Harper had died four years earlier after a brief illness.
Lena had held her hand.
Her mother had told her she loved her.
She had not mentioned that Lena's supposedly dead father was alive.
The betrayal hurt almost physically.
Jack opened the truck's rear storage compartment and removed an envelope.
“Your mother gave me this.”
Lena didn't take it.
“When?”
“Three days before she died.”
“And you waited four years?”
“She told me not to give it to you unless the danger returned.”
Lena stared at her mother's handwriting.
For Lena. Only if they find her.
Her knees nearly gave way.
Jack led her to the curb.
She sat.
The envelope shook in her hands.
Inside was a letter.
My darling Lena,
If you're reading this, then the lie your father and I built around you has finally broken.
Lena covered her mouth.
She kept reading.
You will hate us. You have every right.
But before you decide what kind of parents we were, please learn what we were trying to protect you from.
Your father did not leave because he stopped loving you.
He left because loving you made you the easiest way to destroy him.
Tears blurred the page.
At the bottom was one final sentence.
Do not trust anyone simply because they knew us.
Beneath it, Claire had written:
Especially Thomas Nolan.
Lena slowly raised her eyes.
The sheriff.
The man who had brought casseroles after her father's funeral.
The man who attended her high-school graduation.
The man who carried her mother's coffin.
A siren sounded in the distance.
Jack looked toward the highway.
A Bellhaven County patrol car turned into the abandoned gas station.
Lena stood.
Relief and terror collided inside her.
The driver's door opened.
Sheriff Thomas Nolan stepped out.
His hand rested near his holster.
“Lena,” he called. “Come away from that man.”
Jack whispered, “Don't move.”
Nolan looked at Jack.
“You should have stayed gone, Mercer.”
Lena stared from one man to the other.
Then she realized the sheriff had never asked what happened at the diner.
He already knew.
May you like
And suddenly her mother's warning didn't feel like something written four years ago.
It felt like it had been written for this exact moment.
