Chapter 2 - A Ghost in a Black Coat
Adrian moved backward so fast his heel struck the leg of a chair. He caught himself and tried to laugh. It sounded nothing like him.
The man at the front was my father, Daniel Mercer. He looked older than the photographs on our mantel: thinner face, silver in his beard, one hand held stiffly near his side. Behind him stood Ruth Bell, our family's former security chief, and a broad-shouldered man I recognized from the courthouse, federal investigator Noah Reed.
"That's impossible," Adrian said.
"A lot of things were supposed to be impossible," Dad answered. He saw my face, and his expression changed. He crossed the room without another word, crouched beside me, and carefully held out his arms. He didn't touch me until I leaned into him.
He smelled like rain and the same cedar soap he'd used when I was a kid. That detail did me in. I pressed my forehead against his coat and cried once, hard, before swallowing the rest.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You let me bury you."
"I know."
Adrian recovered enough to straighten his shirt. "She's having some kind of breakdown. You can't just barge into my home."
Ruth held up a tablet. On the screen was a live feed of the foyer. Adrian's hand on my arm. Me hitting the console. The phone sliding across the floor.
"There are cameras you don't control," she said.
His eyes darted to the chandelier.
Noah stepped forward. "We're not here to arrest you tonight. We're here because your wife requested an emergency protective escort. You will stay back."
"My wife?" Adrian repeated, almost amused. "Claire wouldn't know how to request anything without me."
Dad helped me stand. My knees buckled; Ruth put a steady hand under my elbow. Nobody called me weak. Nobody told me to stop crying.
At the door, Adrian said, "Ask him where he's been, Claire. Ask him why the foundation needed a dead man."
Dad went still.
I turned. "What does that mean?"
Adrian's smile returned, smaller and uglier. "Your father didn't disappear because I was stealing. He disappeared because someone found out what he did."
May you like
Dad didn't deny it. And for the first time that night, I felt afraid of the man who had come to save me.
THE DOORS SHE OPENED •
