Chapter 10 - Room 217
Lena reached Miller's Bridge before sunrise.
Jack came with her but remained fifty yards away.
Fog covered the river.
Every shadow looked like a person.
Then footsteps sounded behind her.
Lena turned.
A man emerged from the fog.
Gray hair.
Beard.
Older.
Thinner.
He stopped twenty feet away.
Neither spoke.
Lena searched his face.
Then he smiled.
She knew.
Not because of the photographs.
Because the left corner of his mouth rose first.
Exactly as she remembered.
“Dad?”
Daniel Harper broke.
His face crumpled.
“Hi, baby girl.”
Lena had imagined this moment a thousand different ways during the previous week.
She had imagined hitting him.
Screaming.
Demanding answers.
Instead she ran.
Daniel caught her.
Seventeen years disappeared inside one embrace.
Lena sobbed against his coat.
“You left me.”
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
“I missed you.”
Daniel held her tighter.
“I know.”
She struck his chest once.
Then again.
He let her.
Finally she simply held him.
Jack watched from a distance, wiping his eyes.
When Lena stepped back, she touched Daniel's face.
“You're old.”
He laughed through tears.
“So are you.”
“Rude.”
“I've been waiting seventeen years to embarrass my adult daughter.”
For a moment they were simply father and daughter.
Then Daniel saw movement beyond the bridge.
His smile vanished.
“Down!”
A bullet struck the railing.
Jack fired toward the trees.
Daniel pushed Lena behind concrete.
Men emerged from both sides.
It was an ambush.
“Who knew?” Daniel shouted.
“Everyone!”
“That was the point!”
Lena suddenly understood.
Vale had monitored someone.
But whom?
A black sedan approached.
The rear door opened.
An elderly man stepped out.
Gideon Vale.
He leaned on a cane.
No monster.
No theatrical villain.
Just an old man in an expensive coat.
“Daniel.”
Daniel raised his weapon.
Vale smiled.
“You've spent half your life running from me.”
Daniel answered, “And you've spent half yours afraid of what I know.”
Vale looked at Lena.
“So this is the famous daughter.”
Daniel moved in front of her.
Vale laughed.
“Still doing that?”
Police sirens sounded.
Vale seemed unconcerned.
Because the arriving vehicles weren't Nolan's.
They belonged to men Vale controlled.
Daniel whispered to Lena:
“Run to Room 217.”
She stared.
“What?”
“The motel.”
“Why?”
“The real evidence is there.”
“We already found the recorder.”
“That was never the evidence.”
Vale's men advanced.
Jack reached them.
“Go!”
Daniel grabbed Lena's face.
“Trust me once more.”
She didn't want to leave him.
But she did.
May you like
Because for the first time, her father wasn't disappearing from her.
He was asking her to finish what they had begun.
