Chương 7
Daniel stared at the phone.
Lena moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You’re already home.”
“I mean I need to find Rachel.”
“Daniel.”
He stopped.
“You open that envelope, you can’t put anything back the way it was.”
He looked at the table.
At the envelope.
At his father’s handwriting.
Six years of silence.
Six years of believing the hardest truth was that his father had died without saying goodbye.
Now he wondered if goodbye had never been the message.
Maybe it had been a warning.
His phone buzzed again.
A new message.
Not from Rachel.
Not from Lena.
An unknown number.
The message contained a photograph.
Daniel opened it.
It was his apartment building.
Taken from across the street.
Underneath the image were six words.
You should have left it closed.
Daniel read the message again until the words stopped looking like language and became only shapes on the screen.
You should have left it closed.
His thumb hovered over the phone.
For a second, he considered calling the number.
Then he remembered every time he had answered a stranger’s question in the last forty-eight hours, he had walked away with more confusion than before.
He blocked the screen instead.
“What did you do?” Lena asked.
The question irritated him because it sounded like an accusation.
“I received a text.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You think I opened it.”
“I think someone knows you have the envelope.”
“That doesn’t answer what I did.”
“No.”
She looked toward the table.
“But it tells me you did something someone was watching for.”
The apartment felt smaller.
Not dangerous.
Not yet.
Just crowded with things he could not explain.
Daniel picked up the envelope.
The paper had softened slightly where his fingers had held it earlier.
His father had touched this.
That thought came and went so quickly he almost ignored it.
Thomas Mercer had been gone six years.
Daniel had spent six years carefully arranging his memories into a version that could survive.
His father was stubborn.
His father was difficult.
His father worked too much.
His father loved them but did not know how to say it.
That version had been painful, but it had been manageable.
This was different.
This suggested his father had lived another life in the final years.
A life where he kept secrets.
A life where Rachel knew more than him.
A life where strangers were waiting for him to find something.
“Did my father ever mention David Monroe?” Daniel asked.
Lena shook her head.
“Not to the department.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She noticed the change in his voice.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because if a person changes their identity, that is usually the kind of thing officers write down.”
Daniel almost smiled.
Almost.
“You make everything sound simple.”
“It isn’t simple.”
“Then stop talking like it is.”
The words came out sharper than he intended.
Lena accepted the hit without reacting.
That made him feel worse.
“My father was a mechanic,” Daniel said.
“Maybe.”
He looked at her.
“Maybe?”
“Daniel, I have spent twenty-four hours looking at documents with your father’s name attached to them.”
“My father.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“But the man in those documents was someone who understood systems, paperwork, and risk.”
“That doesn’t mean he was someone else.”
“No.”
Lena lowered her voice.
“It means you may not have known the entire person.”
That hurt because it was true in a way he did not want to admit.
His father had been dead for years, and Daniel still felt like he was defending someone who had never allowed himself to be known.
A knock came from the hallway.
Both of them froze.
The sound was ordinary.
A neighbor.
A delivery person.
Someone who had the wrong apartment.
But neither of them moved.
The knock came again.
Daniel glanced at Lena.
She raised one finger.
Wait.
The third knock was softer.
Then a voice.
“Daniel?”
Rachel.
He exhaled.
Not relief.
Something closer to exhaustion.
He opened the door.
Rachel stood there wearing a gray coat over clothes that looked like she had put them on without caring how they matched.
Her hair was pulled back badly.
She looked older than she had two days ago.
Not older in years.
Older in weight.
Her eyes went immediately to Lena.
“You brought her here?”
“No,” Daniel said.
Rachel stepped inside.
“Then she found you.”
Lena closed the door.
“Rachel Mercer.”
Rachel looked at her.
“You know my name.”
“I’m a police officer.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Rachel gave a small humorless laugh.
“That sounds like something Dad would say.”
Daniel felt the room shift.
He hated that both women seemed to know his father in ways he did not.
“You need to tell me what is happening,” he said.
Rachel looked at the envelope.
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Daniel stared at her.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
“Rachel, someone photographed my apartment.”
Her expression changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“You saw the message.”
“How did you know?”
She looked away.
“Because I got one too.”
The silence afterward felt different.
Not empty.
Shared.
Lena stepped closer.
“What did it say?”
Rachel pulled out her phone.
She unlocked it and handed it over.
The message was from the same unknown number.
A photograph of Rachel’s car.
The caption was shorter.
Stop pretending you are protecting him.
Daniel looked up.
“Protecting who?”
Rachel took the phone back.
“You.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“Then explain it.”
She looked at the envelope.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Before Dad died.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
Daniel felt anger rise.
The old anger.
The one he had carried since the funeral.
The one that had been easier than grief.
“You came to his house with a folder and accused him of lying.”
Rachel’s face tightened.
May you like
“I came to his house because I found evidence that he was scared.”
“He was sick.”
