Chapter 6 - THE MESSAGE IN HER FATHER’S HAND
The note stayed between them all the way back to Connecticut.
Khloe kept it folded inside her coat pocket.
She did not show Lorenzo again.
She did not need to.
He had seen the handwriting.
He had seen her face.
He knew exactly what the message said.
Do not trust the Moretti who saved you.
The words transformed every memory.
Lorenzo hiring her.
Moving her desk.
Saving her from the hitmen.
Taking her to Oyster Bay.
Giving her choices.
Showing her Bellweather.
Had he protected her because he cared?
Or because he needed the key inside her head?
Khloe hated that the answer might be both.
At the safe house, Mateo secured the perimeter.
Lorenzo entered the study.
Khloe followed.
He poured whiskey.
She took the glass from his hand before he could drink and swallowed it herself.
He stared.
She coughed violently.
“That is terrible.”
“It is twelve hundred dollars a bottle.”
“It tastes like burnt furniture.”
He took the glass back.
“Your father’s note.”
“Yes.”
“You believe him.”
“I do not know.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Khloe folded her arms.
“He is my father.”
“If that was him.”
“It was.”
“You saw him for three seconds.”
“I know his face.”
“He looked fourteen years older.”
“I know his face.”
Lorenzo nodded.
He did not argue again.
Khloe pulled out the note.
“What does this mean?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Convenient.”
“I can guess.”
“Then guess.”
He walked toward the window.
“My father had a brother.”
Khloe frowned.
“You have an uncle.”
“Had.”
“Dead?”
“Officially.”
Her stomach tightened.
“What was his name?”
“Gabriel.”
“And?”
“Gabriel Moretti disappeared fifteen years ago.”
“One year before my father.”
“Yes.”
“Was he part of Bellweather?”
Lorenzo turned.
“He created parts of it.”
Khloe sat.
This family apparently produced secrets the way normal families produced holiday arguments.
“Why would my father warn me about ‘the Moretti who saved you’ instead of saying your name?”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“Because maybe he was not referring to me.”
Khloe felt cold.
“Who else saved me?”
Silence.
Then she remembered.
The accident.
Her mother told her a stranger pulled Thomas from the wreck before emergency crews arrived.
A man who vanished before police took his name.
Khloe had forgotten that detail.
She whispered.
“Someone saved my father from the crash.”
Lorenzo nodded.
“If the crash was staged, the saver may have been part of the plan.”
“Gabriel.”
“Possibly.”
Mateo entered.
“I ran facial recognition on traffic cameras near Saint Germaine.”
Khloe stood.
“And?”
“We got him.”
The image showed the older man leaving in the black sedan.
Khloe’s chest tightened.
Thomas Higgins.
Alive.
The software returned a ninety-one percent match against his old driver’s license.
Khloe gripped the desk.
“Where did the car go?”
“North.”
“How far?”
“Lost near the state line.”
Lorenzo looked at Mateo.
“Harbor Light.”
“Probably.”
Khloe turned.
“We go to Maine.”
Mateo shook his head.
“That island is fortified.”
“Then bring more men.”
“It is not that simple.”
“It never is with you people.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Khloe.”
“No. Fourteen years. If he is alive, I am not sitting here while you hold meetings.”
“We need a plan.”
“My entire life has been someone else’s plan.”
The room went quiet.
She looked at both men.
“My father planned for me to remember numbers. Bellweather planned to use him. Arthur planned to track me. You planned to lock me in a safe house. I am finished being moved around like luggage.”
Lorenzo’s expression shifted.
“What do you want?”
“I want to go to Harbor Light.”
“Then we go.”
Mateo stared at him.
“Boss.”
“You heard her.”
“It is a trap.”
“Yes.”
“And we walk into it?”
Lorenzo looked at Khloe.
“We walk into it prepared.”
The drive north gave Khloe too much time to think and too little space to escape her thoughts. She sat with a legal pad on her knees and reconstructed every detail she could remember about Thomas Higgins.
Favorite diner: Marcy’s on Queens Boulevard.
License plate from the old Buick: 4KJ-219.
Mother’s birthday: August 6.
The amount he once spent on a red bicycle he could not afford: $83.17.
The last four digits of the telephone number he made her call if he ever failed to come home: 4412.
Lorenzo watched her fill page after page.
“What are you doing?”
“Building a person.”
“You remember all of that?”
“I remember numbers. The rest sticks to them.”
She turned the page.
“I am afraid when I see him, I am going to remember the wrong father.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“The one from when I was nine. The one who made pancakes shaped like letters and fixed the kitchen faucet with duct tape. What if the man on that island is not him anymore?”
“He will not be.”
Khloe looked sharply at him.
Lorenzo continued.
“Neither are you.”
It was not comforting, exactly. But it was fair.
“He missed everything.”
“Yes.”
“I graduated college.”
“Yes.”
“My mother died.”
“Yes.”
“I dated Trent Wheeler for six months, which frankly should count as a family emergency.”
Lorenzo’s mouth tightened.
“Who is Trent?”
“Not important.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
Lorenzo relaxed by perhaps half an inch.
Khloe stared.
“You cannot threaten every man I have ever dated.”
“I did not threaten him.”
“You asked one question with your murder face.”
“I do not have a murder face.”
Mateo coughed from the front seat.
Khloe pointed at him.
“Witness.”
Mateo kept his eyes on the road.
“I value continued employment.”
The exchange loosened something inside her.
For ten minutes, they were not fugitives driving toward an island run by a criminal conspiracy. They were three exhausted people in a car, annoying one another.
Then Khloe looked back at her list.
At the bottom she wrote one question.
WHY DIDN’T YOU COME HOME?
She underlined it twice.
Lorenzo saw.
He did not offer an answer.
For once, that was exactly what she needed.
They left the next morning.
Not by private jet.
Too visible.
They drove north in two vehicles, changed cars in Massachusetts, then continued to the Maine coast.
Khloe spent the drive studying copied pages from Patient 3179’s file.
One notation repeated.
SUBJECT RETAINS KEY FRAGMENTS DESPITE CHEMICAL DISRUPTION.
“They drugged him.”
Lorenzo looked from the seat beside her.
“Yes.”
“To erase memory?”
“Or retrieve it.”
Khloe turned a page.
“Bellweather needed him to open the archive.”
“Yes.”
“Why keep him alive after?”
“Maybe the archive changed.”
She remembered the access log.
Thomas had opened it three days before his death.
Then no one successfully accessed the master layer for fourteen years.
Until Khloe.
“What if he changed the password?”
“Likely.”
“What if my numbers were not the password?”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“What else?”
“A recovery key.”
Mateo, driving, glanced in the mirror.
“To regain access after he locked everyone out.”
Khloe nodded.
“That is why they needed me. He built the key around things only I would remember.”
Lorenzo’s voice was quiet.
“He trusted you.”
“I was nine.”
“He trusted your mind.”
The words hurt.
She looked out the window.
Hours later they reached a small fishing town.
A rented house overlooked the harbor.
Harbor Light Island sat six miles offshore.
Barely visible through fog.
Mateo spread maps across a table.
“Private airstrip on the south end. Dock on east side. Old lighthouse at north point. Main facility underground.”
“Security?” Lorenzo asked.
“Unknown.”
Khloe stared at the island.
Her father was there.
Maybe.
A boat arrived after dark.
They crossed without lights.
The sea was calmer than Long Island Sound had been.
Khloe sat beside Lorenzo.
Neither spoke.
Halfway across, he handed her a small device.
“Emergency beacon.”
“No tracker?”
“No.”
She took it.
“If this goes wrong—”
“It will.”
“Encouraging.”
“If we are separated, press it.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes.”
“Even if Bellweather is burning?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you lose everything?”
He looked at her.
“Yes.”
Khloe believed him.
That frightened her more than doubt.
They landed near rocks below the lighthouse.
The team moved uphill.
No resistance.
Too easy.
Lorenzo clearly thought the same.
“Stay close.”
They reached the lighthouse.
The door stood open.
Inside, a single lamp burned.
Khloe entered.
“Dad?”
Her voice echoed.
A figure appeared at the top of the circular stairs.
Thomas Higgins.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
Khloe stopped breathing.
He descended slowly.
Each step felt impossible.
When he reached the bottom, Khloe stared at him.
His eyes were the same.
Green.
Tired.
Her father.
She crossed the room.
Then stopped three feet away.
Fourteen years of grief held her in place.
Thomas’s eyes filled.
“Baby girl.”
Khloe broke.
She hit him first.
Both hands against his chest.
Once.
Twice.
Then she collapsed into him.
He held her.
She cried with a sound she had never made before.
Not sadness.
Not relief.
Something deeper.
A childhood reopening.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I know.”
“I buried you.”
“I know.”
“Mom died thinking you were dead.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“I know.”
Khloe pulled away.
“Why did you not come back?”
Pain crossed his face.
“Because if I came back, they would have killed you.”
“Who?”
Thomas looked past her.
At Lorenzo.
His face hardened.
“The Morettis.”
Lorenzo did not move.
Khloe stepped between them.
“Which Moretti?”
Thomas’s gaze shifted back to her.
“The one you trust.”
Khloe’s stomach dropped.
She turned toward Lorenzo.
Thomas spoke again.
“Not him.”
Khloe froze.
Thomas pointed toward Mateo.
“The Russo family saved me for Gabriel Moretti.”
Mateo went still.
Then slowly reached for his gun.
Lorenzo drew first.
“Mateo.”
Khloe’s heart stopped.
Mateo looked at Lorenzo.
His face showed something she had never seen there before.
Not loyalty.
Resignation.
May you like
“I am sorry, boss.”
Then every light on the island went out.
