CHAPTER 7 REAGAN’S LAST BARGAIN
We spent the day preparing for the exchange.
Lena created a duplicate flash drive containing partial Hawthorne files. Walter contacted a retired federal investigator named Samuel Price, one of the few people my father had trusted before the company became compromised.
Price agreed to deliver the original archive to federal authorities if we did not contact him by sunrise.
It was not a perfect safeguard.
But it meant Victor could no longer erase the truth simply by killing us.
At eleven that night, Carter and I drove toward the refinery.
Reagan was supposed to remain at the apartment with Lena and Walter.
She did not.
Five minutes before midnight, my phone rang.
Reagan whispered, “Victor changed the terms.”
“Where are you?”
“With him.”
I pulled the car to the shoulder.
“What did you do?”
“I offered myself in exchange for Camden.”
Carter grabbed the phone.
“Mom, are you insane?”
“I created this. I will end it.”
“Where are you?”
“The refinery.”
The call disconnected.
Carter slammed his fist against the dashboard.
“She always does this.”
“Does what?”
“Decides which lie is best for everyone else.”
He stared toward the dark refinery towers.
“She married Camden because Victor forced her to.”
I looked at him.
“She told me years ago. Victor had proof she falsified loan documents to keep her first husband’s business alive. He promised not to prosecute if she stayed close to Camden and reported what he discovered.”
“So she was spying on my father from the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“Did she ever love him?”
Carter looked away.
“Eventually.”
The refinery gates stood open.
We entered an enormous processing hall lit by portable lamps.
Victor waited on a steel platform above us.
Detective Briggs stood beside him.
Reagan knelt near the railing with her hands tied.
My father sat in a wheelchair several feet away.
Alive.
For a moment, everything disappeared except his face.
He looked older than the man I remembered. A scar crossed his temple. One side of his body seemed weak.
But when he saw me, his eyes filled with recognition.
“Finnley.”
I had imagined that reunion for 1,095 nights.
In every version, I ran to him.
In reality, armed men stood along the platform, and the brother who framed me stood at my side.
Victor held out his hand.
“The drive.”
I lifted the duplicate.
“Release them first.”
Victor laughed.
“You spent three years in prison and still believe you can negotiate.”
“You spent thirty years stealing and still believe money makes you intelligent.”
His smile faded.
Briggs descended the stairs and searched us.
He took Carter’s gun and the flash drive.
“Clean,” he called.
Victor inserted the drive into a laptop.
While he checked the files, I looked at my father.
“Did you let them convict me?”
His mouth trembled.
“I tried to stop it.”
Victor struck the back of his chair.
“Tell him the whole truth.”
Camden closed his eyes.
“The night before your arrest, Victor offered me a choice. Give him Hawthorne or watch him kill you.”
“So you chose prison.”
“I believed prison would keep you alive.”
“You never told me.”
“The calls were monitored. Your attorney was working for Briggs. Every plan I made reached Victor.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“I should have.”
Those words hurt more than any excuse.
“I lost three years.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
My father looked at me.
“You are right.”
He did not ask forgiveness.
He did not defend himself.
He simply accepted the wound he had caused.
Victor removed the flash drive.
“This is incomplete.”
Carter laughed from beside me.
“Did you expect Finnley to bring the real archive?”
Victor looked at him.
“You assured me he would.”
“I lied.”
Carter stepped away from me.
For one terrible second, I could not tell whether our plan had begun or whether he was betraying us again.
Then he pointed at me.
“He still believes I’m helping him.”
Victor smiled.
“You finally understand which family deserves your loyalty.”
Carter climbed the stairs.
Reagan stared at him in horror.
“Carter, don’t.”
He took the gun Briggs offered him and aimed it at me.
Victor turned to my father.
“Look at your sons, Camden. One weak. One resentful. Both ruined by your cowardice.”
Carter descended until he stood six feet away.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
Then he swung the gun toward Briggs.
“Get away from my mother.”
Briggs fired first.
The bullet struck Carter in the shoulder.
Chaos erupted.
I tackled Briggs as Carter fired into the overhead lights. Darkness swallowed the hall.
Walter and Price’s men entered through the loading doors.
Reagan screamed.
Gunfire echoed through the refinery.
I climbed the stairs toward my father.
Victor was dragging Camden’s wheelchair toward a rear exit.
I reached the platform just as Briggs struck me from behind.
I fell against the railing.
Briggs raised his weapon.
Before he could shoot, Reagan drove a metal pipe into his arm.
The gun dropped.
Briggs turned and hit her across the face.
I threw myself at him.
We crashed down the stairs.
At the bottom, Briggs wrapped his hands around my throat.
“You should have stayed convicted,” he hissed.
A gunshot sounded.
Briggs went still.
Carter stood above us, blood covering his shirt.
The gun shook in his hand.
Briggs collapsed.
Carter dropped to his knees.
“Mom?”
Reagan ran to him.
On the upper platform, Victor reached the rear door with my father.
I followed.
Outside, rain had begun falling.
Victor shoved Camden into the back of an ambulance.
Before the doors closed, my father threw something onto the pavement.
A small brass tag.
Victor drove away.
I picked it up.
It bore the number 1968.
Walter reached me.
“What is it?”
“The year the original house burned.”
On the back, my father had scratched an address.
Lena examined it.
“That’s not an address,” she said. “It’s a parcel number.”
“For what property?”
She searched the county records on her phone.
Her face changed.
“The land beneath the Dennis Industrial chemical warehouse.”
A distant explosion shook the night.
An orange glow rose above Silver Lake.
The warehouse was burning.
May you like
Victor was not only destroying evidence.
He was burning the place where he intended to kill my father.
