Chapter 3 - The Man Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Jax had spent eleven years believing his brother was buried in a closed casket outside Tulsa.
He had never seen the body.
That fact suddenly felt less like grief and more like stupidity.
Darla locked the diner doors while Vince pulled the blinds. “Start talking.”
Jax shoved his phone into his pocket. “Not here.”
“You brought this into my diner.”
“I didn’t bring anything.”
Eli spoke from behind him. “My mom did.”
The words shut them both up.
Jax looked at the boy and forced his voice softer. “Your mom’s name is Hannah Carter?”
“Hannah Mercer Carter.”
Darla’s face changed.
Jax closed his eyes for half a second.
Hannah had kept the name.
After everything, she had kept it.
Eli pulled a cheap cell phone from his jacket. “She gave me this too.”
The screen was locked.
“Password?” Jax asked.
“She said you’d know.”
Jax almost laughed. “I haven’t spoken to her in twelve years.”
Eli’s chin lifted. “Then think harder.”
Vince coughed to hide a smile.
Jax typed AUGUST18.
Wrong.
He tried the license plate from his first motorcycle.
Wrong.
Then he remembered Hannah at sixteen, stealing his cassette tapes and writing one word on everything she owned.
RIVER.
The phone unlocked.
There was one saved voicemail.
Jax pressed play.
Hannah’s voice filled the silent diner.
“Jax, if Eli is with you, then I was right to be scared. Listen carefully. Cole is alive.”
Darla covered her mouth.
Jax did not move.
The message continued.
“He never died. The funeral was staged. The witness deal was fake. Everything you were told after the warehouse fire was designed to make you disappear. Cole has spent years rebuilding the network under another name.”
Jax stared at nothing.
The old warehouse fire.
The night he testified.
The night Cole supposedly died.
Hannah’s voice shook once, then steadied.
“He found me three months ago. He wants something you hid before you left. I don’t know what it is. But he thinks I do.”
Jax’s heartbeat slowed into something heavy and dangerous.
He did know what Cole wanted.
A ledger.
Names, payments, cops, judges, shipments.
Enough evidence to bury half a criminal organization.
Jax had hidden it before federal agents moved him out of state.
Only he had never told anyone where.
The voicemail ended with Hannah whispering:
“Mile Marker 17. Under the river stone. And Jax… Eli is not who Cole thinks he is.”
The recording clicked off.
May you like
Eli frowned. “What does that mean?”
Before Jax could answer, the diner’s back door exploded inward.
