Chapter 5 - My Husband Walked Through the Door
I stopped breathing.
David grabbed the phone.
"Marco, turn around."
"We can't."
"Turn around!"
Alessandro looked at the image.
"Safe house is compromised."
"My son is there."
Marco accelerated.
"We go directly and we die directly."
"I don't care."
"I do," David snapped.
I stared at him.
"You lost the right to tell me what risks I can take."
His face tightened.
"I know."
"Then get my son."
"We will."
"No. Now."
Alessandro turned.
"Catherine, Vale wants us angry."
"He has Logan."
"Which means Logan is leverage. He won't hurt him while he still needs something from us."
"You don't know that."
"No."
At least he didn't lie.
We changed vehicles beneath an overpass.
Marco contacted the two guards assigned to Logan.
No response.
Dr. Grant's phone went directly to voicemail.
The safe house cameras showed nothing.
Vale had disabled the system.
David opened a laptop.
His fingers moved quickly.
Seeing him do it was strange.
He had once asked me how to reset our router.
Now he was breaking into encrypted networks in seconds.
"You lied about everything," I said quietly.
He stopped typing.
"No."
"Didn't you?"
He looked at me.
"My love for you wasn't a cover."
"You don't get to say that yet."
He nodded once.
Fair.
"Why did you marry me?"
"Because I loved you."
"Before or after you decided I was useful?"
Pain crossed his face.
"You were never useful to my work."
"Then how did Meridian find us?"
"Because I made a mistake."
"What mistake?"
"I used my real emergency contact after you went into labor."
I stared.
"What?"
"Your delivery had complications. I thought you might die."
The memory came back.
Hemorrhaging.
Doctors rushing.
David standing beside my bed, terrified.
"I logged into a secure system from the hospital because I needed authorization to disappear from an operation."
"And someone traced you."
"Yes."
"So Logan was targeted because you chose us."
"Yes."
His voice cracked.
"I would make that mistake again."
I wanted to hate him.
That made it harder.
"What was the crash supposed to be?"
David looked away.
"Vale ordered a hit on Alessandro."
Alessandro turned from the front seat.
David continued.
"The drunk driver was supposed to hit Alessandro's transport vehicle. When the plan changed, Vale used the same operation to erase me."
"So you weren't supposed to die?"
"Not initially."
"And you agreed to fake it?"
"I believed Meridian was going to kill you and Logan if I came home."
Tears burned.
"Why didn't you tell me after?"
"Because Vale convinced everyone you were under continuous surveillance."
"You saw Logan?"
"From a distance."
"How many times?"
David couldn't answer immediately.
"How many?"
"Twenty-three."
I closed my eyes.
Twenty-three times.
He had seen birthdays.
Preschool.
Maybe playground trips.
Perhaps me carrying groceries in the rain.
"You watched us."
"Yes."
"You watched me tell him his father was dead."
David's eyes filled.
"Yes."
I looked out the window.
"I don't know if I can forgive you."
"I know."
"But we get Logan back."
"We will."
Marco located Vale through a vehicle ping from one of the compromised guards' phones.
An abandoned municipal courthouse annex.
Classic.
Powerful men loved old government buildings.
We approached through a tunnel David knew from city infrastructure maps.
That was at least one engineering skill that had been real.
Inside, Vale waited in a former evidence storage room.
Logan sat on a table eating crackers.
Dr. Grant sat nearby, angry but unharmed.
Two armed men guarded them.
Vale stood in the middle.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
Same gentle face I remembered from David's funeral.
"Hello, Catherine."
I wanted to kill him.
"You hugged me at the cemetery."
"I did."
"You watched me bury an empty coffin."
"Necessary theater."
David stepped beside me.
"Let them go."
Vale smiled.
"David."
"Jonathan."
There was history in those names.
Father and son, almost.
Mentor and student.
Then betrayal.
Vale held out his hand.
"The ring."
I looked toward Logan.
He saw me.
"Mommy!"
Vale grabbed his shoulder.
David raised his gun.
"Touch him again."
Vale laughed.
"Still emotional. Your greatest weakness."
"No," David said. "My greatest weakness was believing you."
Alessandro entered from the second doorway.
Vale's smile disappeared.
"You survived."
"Disappointing, isn't it?"
Marco's men surrounded the exits.
Vale looked trapped.
But men like him never relied on only one exit.
He raised a small remote.
"Everyone relax."
David's face changed.
"Dead-man switch?"
"Explosives beneath this building."
Dr. Grant muttered, "I officially hate rich people."
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
Vale looked at me.
"The ring."
I held it up.
"Why?"
"Because David stole a list."
"Of Meridian members."
"More than that. Accounts. Operations. Judges. Senators. Contractors. Everyone."
"So you're afraid."
Vale smiled.
"Careful."
"You are."
I stepped closer.
"That's why you needed a drunk driver. That's why you needed fake funerals. That's why you hide behind men with guns."
"Catherine."
David's warning.
I ignored him.
"You spent two years watching a janitor and a toddler because you were afraid of a ring."
Vale's smile vanished.
Good.
I threw it toward him.
He caught it.
David shouted, "Catherine!"
Vale examined the ring.
Then his face changed.
"Where is the chip?"
I smiled.
For the first time all night, I was ahead.
"Captain Bear."
Vale looked toward Logan's stuffed bear sitting beside Dr. Grant.
Marco had removed the actual chip before Pier Nine.
The ring had been empty.
Vale's composure broke.
He hit the remote.
Nothing happened.
Marco lifted a second device.
"Bomb frequency jammed."
Alessandro smiled.
Vale reached for his weapon.
David fired first.
Not at Vale.
At his hand.
The gun fell.
Marco's men moved.
Seconds later, Jonathan Vale was on the floor in cuffs.
Logan jumped from the table.
I ran.
He hit my legs so hard I almost fell.
I lifted him.
"Mommy."
"I'm here."
Then Logan saw David.
Everything stopped.
David didn't move.
He looked terrified.
More terrified than he had facing armed men.
Logan stared.
"Daddy?"
David's face crumpled.
"Hi, buddy."
Logan looked at me.
"Is real?"
I couldn't answer for a second.
Then I nodded.
"Yes."
Logan walked slowly toward him.
David knelt.
His hands shook.
"I'm sorry."
Logan touched his beard.
"Scratchy."
David laughed and cried at the same time.
Then our son threw his arms around his neck.
I turned away because I couldn't watch without breaking.
Alessandro stood beside me.
"You okay?"
"No."
"Good answer."
Police sirens approached.
Not ordinary police.
Federal tactical units connected to a small group David still trusted.
Vale was taken.
Dr. Grant was freed.
It should have felt like victory.
It didn't.
Because Matteo remained out there.
And Meridian was bigger than Vale.
Back at a secure federal site, Marco finally decrypted the chip.
A list appeared.
Hundreds of names.
Operations.
Payments.
Then David froze.
"What?"
He scrolled.
One file.
PROJECT WINTERS.
He opened it.
My photograph appeared.
Not recent.
Seventeen years old.
High school.
My stomach dropped.
"Why did Meridian have a file on me before I met you?"
David looked as confused as I felt.
Then he opened the attached authorization.
A signature sat at the bottom.
I recognized the surname.
Winters.
But it wasn't David's.
It belonged to the man I had been told died when I was twelve.
My father.
And beside his signature was another name.
MATTEO ROMANO.
David looked at me.
"Catherine..."
A door opened behind us.
An older man stepped into the room.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
A scar across one cheek.
My childhood came rushing back all at once.
The man whispered my nickname.
"Cat."
May you like
My knees almost collapsed.
My father was supposed to have been dead for eighteen years.
