Chapter 6 - Harper's Father's Secret
“Don't,” Adrian said.
Cole stopped.
Harper backed toward the kitchen.
“Your name is here.”
Cole stared at the page.
“That's not me.”
“C. Barrett.”
“My father's name was Charles.”
Silence.
Cole took a slow breath.
“My father worked for Victor.”
Adrian had never known.
“He died when I was sixteen,” Cole continued. “At least that's what I was told.”
Harper looked between them.
“So everyone has a dead father who might not be dead?”
Neither man appreciated the observation.
Cole examined the page.
“These payments ended nineteen years ago.”
Adrian nodded.
The same year both fathers died.
Cole turned the paper over.
A line was written faintly along the bottom.
THE CHILD SAW EVERYTHING.
Harper stared.
“What child?”
Adrian looked at her.
She understood.
“No.”
“You said you couldn't remember the house.”
“I was seven.”
“Trauma can bury memory.”
Harper sat down.
Fragments surfaced.
A kitchen.
Her father shouting.
A man with a silver ring.
Blood on a white shirt.
A boy.
She looked at Adrian.
“You were there.”
Adrian went still.
“I remember a boy.”
“What did he do?”
Harper closed her eyes.
The memory sharpened.
Young Adrian pulling her behind a staircase.
Covering her mouth.
Whispering, Don't make a sound.
Then gunshots.
Harper opened her eyes.
“You saved me.”
Adrian looked away.
He remembered the girl now.
Small.
Terrified.
Daniel had pushed her toward him seconds before everything collapsed.
Adrian had spent nineteen years remembering only her frightened eyes.
He had never known her name.
Until now.
Harper whispered, “You knew me.”
“I didn't recognize you.”
“But you remembered?”
“Every day.”
The room became quiet.
For the first time, Harper saw something beneath Adrian's control.
Not cruelty.
Grief.
She reached toward him.
A gunshot shattered the window.
Adrian threw her down.
Cole returned fire.
Another bullet struck the wall.
“Back exit!” Cole shouted.
Adrian pulled Harper through the kitchen.
They reached the stairwell.
Harper stopped.
A woman stood one floor below.
Gray hair.
Pale face.
Harper knew her.
Impossible.
Her mother had been dead for three years.
“Mom?”
The woman looked up.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Harper.”
Harper stepped down.
Adrian caught her.
The woman whispered, “Don't trust Victor.”
Then she looked directly at Adrian.
“And don't trust Cole.”
A shot rang out.
The stairwell light shattered.
When emergency lighting returned, the woman was gone.
But something remained on the step.
May you like
A key.
And attached to it was a tag bearing the address of Adrian Crowe's childhood home.
