Chương 5
His bare feet did not touch the floor.
Ethan pressed his thumb against his eyebrow.
“I hate you.”
“I know. Get Noah socks.”
The call ended.
Ethan stood there for several seconds.
Then he looked down.
Noah was barefoot.
He had noticed the secret lift, the bruises, the video, the broken finger, the possibility that the dead were not dead.
He had not noticed his son had no socks.
Ethan went back into the conference room.
“I need to get your shoes.”
“No.”
“They’re in the suite.”
“I don’t want them.”
“We need something on your feet.”
Noah considered the problem.
“Can I wear yours?”
Ethan looked at his size-eleven leather boots.
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’d fall over.”
“I can walk slow.”
Despite everything, Ethan smiled.
“Okay. I’ll find something.”
Ruiz had a staff member bring a pair of resort gift-shop slippers printed with tiny green pine trees. They were far too large, but Noah shoved his feet into them and seemed satisfied.
At 10:28, Victoria asked to speak to Ethan.
He refused.
At 10:41, she asked again.
He refused.
At 10:47, the younger security officer approached Ruiz and quietly handed her something written on hotel stationery.
Victoria had sent a note.
Ruiz gave it to Ethan.
It contained six words.
ASK HER ABOUT THE NAME ANNA REED.
Ethan read it twice.
Then folded it.
“What does that mean?” Ruiz asked.
“I don’t know.”
That part, at least, was true.
Daniel answered his second call with, “What did I just say?”
“Anna Reed.”
A pause.
“Who is Anna Reed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Victoria wrote the name.”
Daniel sighed.
“Fine. I’ll have someone run public records. Public only.”
“You can do that?”
“I can type.”
“Fast?”
“Not faster because you’re rich.”
Ethan looked at the paper again.
Anna Reed.
The name meant nothing.
Then it meant something.
Not the name itself.
The handwriting.
Victoria had written in block capitals, but the R in Reed was formed with an odd hooked leg.
Mara wrote capital R that way.
He had seen it on grocery lists, birthday cards, sticky notes, permission forms.
Maybe everybody did.
Maybe he was losing his mind.
At eleven twelve, Daniel called back.
“There is an Anna Marie Reed with a Colorado driver’s license issued two years ago. Age thirty-five.”
Mara would have been thirty-five.
Ethan gripped the phone.
“Address?”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“I’m not giving you a residential address at eleven at night while you are emotionally unstable.”
“I am not unstable.”
“You are standing in a hotel after finding your child in a hidden elevator and discovering your dead wife may be alive.”
Ethan looked at the brass wall sconce.
“Fair.”
“She has a registered LLC.”
“What kind?”
“Bookkeeping services. Small. Mailing address in Grand Junction. Nothing dramatic.”
“Photo?”
“Not from what I can access lawfully tonight.”
Ethan sat beside Noah, who had finally fallen asleep on two pushed-together chairs with Captain Brown under his chin.
“Can you search Mara?”
“Search what?”
“Anything after the crash.”
“Not tonight in any meaningful way.”
Ethan said nothing.
Daniel’s voice softened.
“Do you want me to come up there tomorrow?”
“The roads are closed.”
“When they open.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Ethan stared at Noah’s face.
“Daniel.”
“Yeah?”
“If Noah isn’t…”
His throat closed around the sentence.
Daniel waited.
Ethan tried again.
“If he isn’t biologically mine, what happens?”
“Nothing happens tonight.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. But it’s the answer you need.”
Ethan rubbed his hand over his mouth.
Daniel continued. “You’re his legal father. You’re on his birth certificate. You have raised him from birth. Biology may matter later in ways I’d want a family lawyer to explain properly, especially if there was fraud, but no one is walking in tomorrow and taking him because of one sentence Victoria said.”
Ethan’s shoulders loosened by perhaps half an inch.
“Okay.”
“Do not ask him to reassure you.”
The words stung.
“I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you would. Maybe not on purpose.”
Ethan looked at Noah.
Daniel was right, which made Ethan hate him again.
“Get through the night.”
After midnight, the storm intensified.
The resort lost power for nine seconds before the generators engaged. Noah woke when the lights blinked out and grabbed Ethan’s arm so hard his fingernails hurt.
“It’s okay.”
“Is she coming?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
Ethan looked toward the door.
The security officer was still outside.
“Yes.”
This promise he could make.
Ruiz brought him coffee from the staff kitchen.
It tasted burned.
He drank all of it.
Around twelve thirty, Victoria agreed to let the hotel move her to another secured room if she could speak to Ethan for five minutes first.
Ruiz did not like it.
Ethan said yes.
Noah was asleep again, and Janice agreed to sit with him.
They used an empty dining room two doors away.
Victoria had changed out of her gown into hotel sweatpants, a cream sweater, and borrowed slippers. Without the dress and diamonds, she looked younger and much more tired.
The cut on her ankle had been bandaged.
Ethan remained standing.
Victoria sat.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
Finally she said, “Mara is alive.”
Ethan’s body reacted before his mind did.
His stomach contracted.
His fingers went numb.
He had believed it already.
Hearing the words made belief irrelevant.
“How long have you known?”
Victoria looked at the table.
“How long?”
“Since the beginning.”
Ethan walked away from her.
There was nowhere to go, so he reached the windows, saw only his own reflection, and came back.
“You identified her coat.”
“Yes.”
“You sat with me at the sheriff’s office.”
“Yes.”
“You helped me tell Noah.”
Victoria shut her eyes.
“Yes.”
He put both hands on the back of a chair.
“Why?”
“Mara asked me to.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It does, just not enough.”
“Then keep going.”
Victoria looked toward the door.
“Three months before the crash, Mara came to my apartment. You were in Boston.”
May you like
“I remember.”
“She said she had been moving money from the foundation.”
