Chương 6
Daniel stared.
“Did you believe him?”
Michael did not answer immediately.
That was the answer.
“You did.”
“I believed that I needed more proof.”
“You believed waiting was safer.”
“Yes.”
Daniel nodded once.
The movement was almost calm.
That scared Ortiz more than anger.
“You waited,” Daniel said.
“I was trying to protect the company.”
“No.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You were trying to protect yourself.”
Michael flinched.
The reaction was small.
But real.
Nobody spoke.
Outside the office, someone laughed in the hallway.
A group of employees walked past carrying coffee cups and talking about a meeting that had nothing to do with the collapse happening behind the door.
For a moment, Daniel hated them.
Not because they had done anything wrong.
Because the world kept moving while his life had been stuck in the same room for five years.
He looked at the coffee stain on the old desk.
A tiny brown mark near the corner.
Evelyn used to complain about stains on furniture.
She never cleaned them herself.
She would just put a coaster over them and say she was “creating a temporary solution.”
He had always found that annoying.
Now he would have given anything to hear her say it again.
“Where is Thomas now?” Ortiz asked.
Michael reached for his phone.
Then stopped.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where your business partner is?”
“He left the company months ago.”
Daniel looked over.
“What?”
Michael sighed.
“After the board investigation started.”
“What board investigation?”
Michael looked uncomfortable again.
Daniel stepped closer.
“You keep saying things like I should already know.”
“I thought you did.”
“That is the problem.”
Michael looked at him.
“You were never asking questions.”
The words landed harder because they were true.
Daniel wanted to argue.
He wanted to point out every reason he had been focused on survival after Evelyn disappeared.
He wanted to explain the doctors, the lawyers, the police reports, the endless conversations where people asked him questions he could not answer.
But the explanation sounded weaker every time he repeated it.
Because somewhere inside all of that pain, he had stopped looking.
He had accepted the version of events that required the least amount of movement.
Evelyn left.
Evelyn was gone.
Evelyn’s story ended.
And now a photograph was telling him that was never true.
Ortiz took a slow breath.
“We need to find Thomas.”
Daniel looked at her.
“We?”
The detective met his eyes.
“You’re involved whether you want to be or not.”
“I don’t want to be involved.”
She glanced at the photograph.
“You were involved five years ago.”
Daniel looked down.
The statement was unfair.
And fair.
Both things existed at once.
Maya picked up the wooden box.
“My mom said not to trust people who only tell half the truth.”
Nobody responded.
The child placed the envelope back inside.
Daniel watched her hands.
Careful.
Precise.
Like she had practiced protecting things that were too important for her age.
“Did she leave anything else?” he asked.
Maya looked toward the box.
“There was a place.”
“What place?”
“She said if something happened, I should go there only after I knew who was lying.”
Ortiz frowned.
“Where?”
Maya looked at Daniel.
“I don’t know if I should say.”
Daniel almost told her she could trust him.
The words reached his mouth.
Then stopped.
Because five years ago, Evelyn had trusted him too.
And somehow, that trust had not been enough.
“You don’t have to tell me because I’m Daniel,” he said quietly.
Maya watched him.
“You can tell me because you decide I should know.”
The girl studied his face.
After a moment, she nodded.
“She called it the blue house.”
Michael’s expression changed.
Daniel noticed.
So did Ortiz.
“You know it?” Ortiz asked.
Michael stood up.
“No.”
Nobody believed him.
The attorney grabbed his coat.
“Wait.”
Ortiz moved between him and the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to make a call.”
“To who?”
Michael looked at her.
“Someone who can explain.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“No.”
Michael stopped.
“You don’t get to disappear into another phone call.”
“I am not disappearing.”
“You already did that.”
Michael’s face tightened.
The accusation hurt because it came from someone who had the right to make it.
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
Daniel froze.
The sentence was too serious to ignore.
“What does that mean?”
Michael looked at the photograph.
Then at Maya.
Then back at Daniel.
“I think Thomas was afraid of what Evelyn found.”
The room became smaller.
“And I think,” Michael continued, “he was afraid of what you would do if you found it too.”
Daniel looked at the photograph in his hand.
Thomas smiling.
Evelyn standing beside him.
A moment frozen before everything changed.
For years Daniel had imagined Evelyn’s disappearance as an ending.
Now it felt like the beginning of something someone had worked very hard to bury.
Daniel did not move when Michael said it.
The words were too large to fit inside the room.
“I knew she was alive.”
Maya’s fingers tightened around the wooden box. Ortiz stopped writing, the pen hovering above the page. Even the sounds from the street below seemed distant now, reduced to a dull wash of engines and footsteps behind the office windows.
Daniel kept the phone against his ear, but Evelyn’s voice was gone.
“Say that again,” he said.
Michael looked at him for several seconds.
“I knew she survived.”
The anger came before the questions.
Daniel crossed the room so quickly that Ortiz stepped between them without thinking.
“Daniel.”
“Move.”
“No.”
The single word from Ortiz was calm, but it landed.
Daniel stopped.
Michael did not look away.
“I deserve that,” Michael said.
“That is not the problem.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Daniel’s voice cracked slightly, and he hated that it did. “You don’t get to stand there and say you know.”
Michael rubbed a hand over his face.
“I should have told you.”
May you like
“You think?”
“I should have told you five years ago.”
