CHAPTER 5 THE HOUSE BEHIND THE HOUSE
The coordinates led us back to Silver Lake.
Not near the cemetery.
Not near the company.
They led directly to my childhood home.
Reagan’s home now.
We parked two streets away and entered through an overgrown path behind the property.
“Victor’s men watch the front,” Reagan whispered. “There are cameras near the garage and main gate.”
“You installed them?”
“Victor did.”
The house appeared between the trees.
Under moonlight, the elegant gray paint looked cold and lifeless.
Reagan led us to the remains of my father’s garden.
“Camden spent years restoring this property,” she said. “The original house burned in 1968. A smaller structure survived behind it.”
I looked around.
“There’s nothing here.”
She knelt beside a stone retaining wall and pressed a hidden latch.
Part of the wall moved inward.
Behind it, narrow stairs descended beneath the garden.
“The house behind the house,” Walter murmured.
We entered a hidden basement.
My father had built an underground office beneath the property.
Shelves held decades of company records. Maps covered the walls. A mechanical clock ticked above a wooden desk.
At the center of the room stood a portrait of my mother.
The same portrait Reagan had removed from the entrance hall.
“You kept it,” I said.
“I hid it.”
Reagan looked at the painting with an expression I could not understand.
“Camden came here whenever he believed the house was being monitored.”
Lena found a computer beneath the desk.
“No hard drive.”
“Victor took it,” Reagan said.
I examined the drawers.
Inside one was a collection of birthday cards I had sent my father from prison. Every envelope had been opened and carefully saved.
He had received them.
He had not abandoned me.
Beside the cards lay an old cassette tape labeled with my name.
Finnley — age twelve.
Walter found a tape player.
I inserted the cassette.
My mother’s voice filled the room.
“Camden, if anything happens to me, Finnley must never be told until he is old enough to understand.”
There was a pause.
My father answered.
“You’re frightening yourself.”
“No. Victor came to the office again. He knows I found the missing accounts.”
“You said you destroyed the copies.”
“I lied.”
My heartbeat quickened.
My mother had known about Victor’s theft long before her death.
She continued.
“The money isn’t the worst part. He has been transporting restricted chemicals using our company permits. If the authorities discover it, they’ll believe we approved everything.”
“Where is the proof?”
“Hawthorne.”
“The old logistics server?”
“Yes. I changed the access system. It requires two family keys.”
The tape crackled.
“What keys?” my father asked.
“One is in the silver compass you gave Finnley. The other is inside my portrait.”
I turned toward the painting.
Reagan stepped back.
Walter removed the frame from the wall.
Behind the canvas was a small metal compartment containing a narrow black device.
A security key.
I remembered the compass.
My father gave it to me on my twelfth birthday, two weeks before my mother died.
It had disappeared after my arrest.
“Carter took it,” Reagan said quietly.
“How do you know?”
“I found it in his room after the trial.”
“Where is it now?”
“Victor has it.”
The cassette continued.
“If Victor learns that Finnley has the first key, he will hurt him,” my mother said.
My father answered, “Then I’ll protect our son.”
“You may have to protect him from the truth.”
The recording ended.
I stared at the machine.
“What truth?”
No one answered.
Lena connected the black device to the computer.
A login screen appeared.
HAWTHORNE ARCHIVE: SECOND KEY REQUIRED
“We need the compass,” she said.
A noise came from above us.
A door closing.
Everyone froze.
Footsteps crossed the garden.
Then Carter’s voice sounded from the stairwell.
“Mom?”
Reagan switched off the lamp.
Carter descended slowly.
He carried a gun in one hand and my silver compass in the other.
“I knew you’d bring him here,” he said.
Reagan stepped between us.
“Give Finnley the compass.”
Carter laughed.
“You still think this is about him?”
“It was always about your debt.”
“No, Mom. It was about you choosing Camden’s real son over me.”
I stared at him.
“Real son?”
Carter looked delighted by my confusion.
“Oh, she never told you?”
“Carter,” Reagan warned.
He ignored her.
“My mother married Camden when I was sixteen. I spent years trying to earn his respect. But he only saw Finnley. Perfect Finnley. Loyal Finnley. The heir.”
“You framed me because you were jealous?”
“I framed you because Camden offered me money to leave the country.”
Reagan’s face changed.
“That’s not true.”
“I heard him tell Victor that he needed both sons gone.”
Both sons.
The phrase hung in the room.
Carter looked at me.
“You still don’t understand, do you? Camden didn’t marry my mother by accident.”
Reagan closed her eyes.
Carter raised the compass.
“Victor told me the truth. Camden was my father too.”
Silence swallowed the room.
I looked at Reagan.
“Is he lying?”
She could not meet my eyes.
“Answer me.”
Her voice broke.
“No.”
Carter was not only my stepbrother.
He was my father’s son.
My half brother.
And for three years, he had watched me rot in prison for a crime he committed.
Carter pointed the gun at me.
“All my life, he hid me while displaying you like a trophy.”
“That doesn’t justify what you did.”
“No. But it explains why I’m not giving you the company, the house, or the father.”
He moved toward the computer.
Lena stepped back.
Carter inserted the compass into the second port.
The Hawthorne archive unlocked.
Thousands of documents appeared.
Payments.
Shipment records.
Names of judges, officers, executives, and politicians.
Then a red banner flashed across the screen.
REMOTE ACCESS DETECTED. DATA PURGE INITIATED.
Carter’s confidence vanished.
“What did you do?” Reagan demanded.
“Nothing.”
A countdown appeared.
Sixty seconds.
Lena began copying files to the flash drive.
Carter grabbed the computer.
Walter raised his pistol.
Then the hidden room filled with the smell of gasoline.
Reagan looked toward the stairs.
Smoke curled beneath the door.
May you like
Victor had found us.
And he intended to burn the house, the evidence, and every member of Camden Dennis’s family with it.
