Chương 5
“No.”
“Your address is public.”
“My neighbor has a key.”
“This isn’t about a locked door.”
Daniel looked at the major. “Give me the phone.”
The major glanced at Whitaker, then handed it over.
Daniel called his neighbor, Walter Price, who answered on the third ring with, “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Walt.”
“I’m looking at your face on television.”
“Is anyone at the house?”
“Two news vans, one black SUV, and Mrs. Delaney from across the street pretending to water the same patch of flowers.”
“Get out of there.”
“I’m in my kitchen.”
“Lock the back door.”
“It hasn’t locked since Easter.”
“Use the chair.”
“I’m not jamming a chair under my doorknob because you turned out to be Rambo.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Walt.”
The joking disappeared from the other man’s voice. “All right. What do you need?”
“Go to my place through the alley. Get the metal box from the shelf above the washer.”
“Which metal box?”
“The gray one.”
“You own six gray metal boxes.”
“The one with the red tape.”
“What’s in it?”
“Just get it. Don’t open it.”
A pause.
“Daniel, there are people in your front yard.”
“Use the back.”
“You know I have sciatica.”
“You’ve also been stealing my tomatoes for eight years. Consider this repayment.”
Walter muttered something impolite and hung up.
Daniel handed the phone back.
Whitaker asked, “What’s in the box?”
“My life before produce.”
The secure vehicle was a black sport utility vehicle with tinted windows and a driver who kept his eyes forward. Emily joined them beneath the stadium after removing her ceremonial gloves. She had ignored three calls from friends, two from her assigned unit, and one from an unknown Washington number.
When she saw Daniel, she walked past him and entered the back seat without speaking.
He followed. Whitaker took the front passenger seat, leaving father and daughter side by side with twelve inches of dark leather between them.
Outside the service exit, reporters crowded behind portable barriers. Microphones lifted as the vehicle appeared. Cameras pressed toward the glass. Daniel turned his face away.
Emily did not.
She watched the crowd through the tint.
A woman ran alongside the vehicle for several yards, shouting, “Mr. Lawson, why were you declared dead?”
Emily’s head turned slowly toward her father.
Daniel stared at his hands.
The convoy moved through the base beneath rows of trees and brick buildings. Cadets and families walked along sidewalks carrying flowers, balloons, and garment bags. Some recognized the vehicle. Phones rose.
At the guest residence, security officers closed a gate behind them. The house was larger than Daniel’s entire property, with white columns and a porch furnished with chairs no one appeared to use.
Inside, an aide offered coffee.
Daniel asked for tea.
The aide looked surprised, as though truck drivers were assigned coffee by regulation.
Emily went upstairs to change. She came down twenty minutes later in dark slacks and a plain blue shirt. Without the uniform, she appeared younger and angrier.
Whitaker had taken a call in the study. Daniel sat in the kitchen, working a paper label from a water bottle with his thumbnail.
Emily opened the refrigerator, looked inside, and closed it without taking anything.
“How did you meet Mom?”
Daniel placed the strip of label on the table.
“At a bowling alley.”
“You told me you met at a truck stop diner.”
“She worked at the diner. We first spoke at the bowling alley.”
“Was anything you told me true?”
He leaned back.
“That isn’t fair.”
“No?”
“I told you what mattered.”
“You told me what was convenient.”
Daniel looked toward the window. A security officer walked along the fence outside.
Emily pulled out the chair opposite him. “Did you kill people?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
She folded her arms. “How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“How can you not know?”
“Because it wasn’t a target range.”
She flinched at the edge in his voice.
Daniel rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying things like I’m supposed to understand the missing forty years between them.”
“I didn’t say you should understand.”
“Then help me.”
He looked at her.
The anger in her face was not simple anger. Beneath it was humiliation, fear, and a child’s offended certainty that a parent should remain knowable even after death, divorce, distance, or age. Emily had built her life on discipline partly because Daniel seemed so plain. He woke early. He paid bills on Fridays. He carried hard candy in his truck and never threw away screws. He disliked parades, fireworks, crowded restaurants, and people who backed into parking spaces when no one was waiting.
She had mistaken the limits of his life for its boundaries.
“I joined because of Grandpa,” she said.
Daniel nodded. Susan’s father had served in Germany during the final years of the Cold War and spent the next thirty years making every story about weather, card games, or incompetent cooks. Emily had his folded flag in a case.
“You let me believe I was the first Lawson in uniform.”
“You were.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t born Lawson.”
Emily stared.
Daniel spoke carefully. “My name was Daniel Mercer.”
The kitchen seemed to contract.
“Mercer,” she repeated.
Whitaker entered from the hallway and stopped.
Emily looked between them. “The same Mercer?”
Daniel nodded.
“Colonel Stephen Mercer is your—”
“Half brother.”
Whitaker pulled out a chair but did not sit. “You never told me.”
“There was no reason.”
Emily’s voice rose. “No reason?”
Daniel pressed both palms to the table.
“Our father had a family before he met my mother. Stephen was sixteen years older. We saw him twice when I was a kid. He already wore a uniform. My mother thought he walked on water.”
“You served under your brother?”
“Not directly. I didn’t know he was assigned to the task force until I arrived.”
“Did everyone know?”
“No.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
May you like
Whitaker swore softly.
Daniel gave him a tired look. “There’s your missing piece.”
