Chapter 7 - The House With the Yellow Kitchen
“Upstairs,” Austin ordered.
Elena took Jacey.
Marcus moved toward the door.
Bruno killed the lights.
Federal vehicles surrounded the mansion.
Austin had survived raids before.
This one was different.
Whitmore controlled people inside law enforcement.
Surrender might mean disappearing before reaching court.
Judge Bell stepped forward.
“I can get him out legally.”
“If the arrest team is legitimate,” Marcus said.
Bell looked toward the windows.
“That is the problem.”
Austin checked the security feed.
A dozen armed agents.
One face caught his attention.
Nathan Pierce.
The man who had vanished from Austin's mansion was wearing federal tactical gear.
“That's not a federal team,” Austin said.
Marcus stared.
“Then who are they?”
“Whitmore's cleanup crew.”
They escaped through an old service tunnel beneath the wine cellar.
Austin's father had built it during the violent years.
For once, Austin was grateful for the paranoia he'd inherited.
They drove north.
Back to Vermont.
Back to the yellow house.
Elena stood inside the kitchen after six years and touched the counter.
“You kept it.”
Austin leaned against the doorway.
“I bought it after they moved you.”
“Why?”
“I told myself it was an investment.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
Jacey wandered upstairs.
Bruno and Marcus secured the property.
For the first time since Elena returned, Austin and she were alone.
“You should have told me about Jacey,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I had a right to know.”
“Yes.”
“Stop agreeing.”
“What would you prefer?”
“A reason good enough to give me six years back.”
Elena's eyes filled.
“I don't have one.”
Austin looked away.
“I woke up every day for the first year wanting to call you.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because the government told me you were safer if I didn't.”
“They told me the same thing.”
He looked at her.
“You believed them?”
“No.”
That almost made him smile.
Elena stepped closer.
“I was going to come back.”
“When?”
“When the last Bullard appeal ended.”
“That was four years ago.”
“Then someone sent me a photograph of Jacey at school.”
Austin understood.
“They found you.”
“Yes.”
“So you ran.”
“Again.”
“And kept running.”
“Until there was nowhere left.”
Austin looked toward the ceiling.
Jacey's footsteps crossed above them.
“She thinks I'm some kind of hero.”
“She remembers how I talked about you.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That once, when I was terrified, there was a man who stayed awake outside my bedroom door all night because I was afraid someone would come through it.”
Austin remembered.
Elena smiled faintly.
“She thought you were a knight.”
“I've been called worse.”
“She also knows what you are.”
Austin's smile disappeared.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“Then she shouldn't admire me.”
Elena stepped closer.
“Maybe she sees the part you don't.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Then Jacey called, “Mom?”
Elena hurried up.
Austin followed.
Jacey stood in the old nursery holding the music box.
She had removed the velvet lining.
Beneath it was a micro-SD card.
Elena stared.
“I didn't put that there.”
Austin took it.
They inserted it into an offline laptop.
A video appeared.
Austin's father sat behind a desk.
Recorded twenty years earlier.
“If Austin sees this, then I failed.”
Austin stopped breathing.
His father continued.
“Richard Vale has people in government. Charles Whitmore is one of them. But neither is the head.”
Austin leaned closer.
“The person controlling the network is inside my own organization.”
The recording glitched.
Then resumed.
“I made the mistake of trusting—”
Static.
The video froze.
Marcus swore.
Jacey pointed at the screen.
“There.”
A reflection appeared in a window behind Austin's father.
A young man stood outside the room.
Bruno enlarged the image.
The face was blurry.
But visible.
Marcus went pale.
“I know him.”
Austin turned.
“Who?”
Marcus swallowed.
“That's Nathan's father.”
Elena shook her head.
“No. Nathan told me his father died before he was born.”
Marcus looked at Austin.
“He lied.”
Another file appeared automatically.
A photograph.
Nathan as a teenager.
Beside him stood Senator Whitmore.
And behind them was Richard Vale.
Austin leaned closer.
There was a fourth man.
His face had been scratched out.
But handwritten beneath the photograph were two words:
YOUR BROTHER.
Austin stared.
“I don't have a brother.”
Elena looked at him.
“Your father apparently thought you did.”
Then someone knocked on the front door.
Three slow knocks.
No one should have known they were there.
Austin approached the window.
A man stood on the porch.
He looked about forty.
Dark hair.
Familiar eyes.
He raised both empty hands.
Then he spoke through the door.
“Austin, my name is Daniel Cole.”
Austin froze.
May you like
The stranger smiled sadly.
“And I'm your older brother.”
