Chapter 9 - Marcus Tells His First Truth
Marcus insisted on meeting under the lights of a twenty-four-hour diner. Katherine and Ben took a booth near the door. I sat across from my former supervisor and watched him stir coffee he'd never drink.
"You threatened me in the parking lot," I said.
"I was warning you."
"You helped have me fired."
"Yes."
He said it without excuses. That surprised me more than another lie would have.
"Whitcomb ordered me to plant the photograph in a destruction crate," Marcus continued. "He wanted to see whether you'd recognize it. He said you were asking questions about your mother's old personnel file."
I had requested the file two weeks earlier, hoping to learn about the benefits she'd left behind. That small act had set everything in motion.
"Why would he care?"
Marcus stared at the table. "Because Sofia was his daughter."
The diner seemed to lose its sound. I saw the picture again: Graham beside my mother, both standing stiffly outside the warehouse. I'd assumed he was her employer. I hadn't imagined he might be my grandfather.
"You're lying."
"She was born Sofia Whitcomb. She married your father, changed her name, and left the family. Graham cut her off. When she discovered what his business partners were doing, she came back as an employee to collect evidence."
"And what did you do?"
"I kept the records moving and told myself I wasn't hurting anyone." His voice broke. "I was wrong."
Katherine slid into the booth. "Where is Sofia now?"
Marcus looked past her toward the windows. "The last time I saw her, she was leaving the warehouse with a child. A boy about six. She told me not to follow her."
"Was the boy Mateo?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Where did they go?"
"I don't know. But I know the name used on their travel documents."
Marcus wrote on a napkin: MARA HOLLOWAY.
May you like
Ben, sitting by the door, saw the name and turned as white as the sugar packets.
"That's my sister," he said. "She disappeared nineteen years ago."
