Chapter 10 - My Mother’s Last Lie
The federal safe house was forty miles outside Millhaven.
No reporters.
No neighbors.
No ringing phones.
Just six of us sitting around a dining table while my mother finally told the truth.
Aaron had shown her the ledger three months before he died.
Not a digital spreadsheet.
A real book.
Leather cover.
Handwritten transactions going back almost twenty years.
Names.
Dates.
Property numbers.
Bribes.
Payments.
Aaron believed digital files could be altered.
The ledger couldn’t.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Mom stared at the table.
“I burned it.”
Nobody spoke.
Rebecca stood so quickly her chair scraped across the floor.
“You what?”
“I panicked.”
“That ledger could have destroyed them eighteen years ago.”
“I had two children.”
“So did Aaron.”
My mother slammed both palms on the table.
“And then Aaron was murdered!”
Jamie jumped.
Mom immediately lowered her voice.
“I came home that night and found him on the floor. I saw blood. I saw the broken lamp. Then I remembered what he told me.”
“What?”
“That if something happened, they would come for the ledger next.”
“So you burned it?”
“I thought if it disappeared, they would leave you children alone.”
“But they arrested you.”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed silent.”
Her eyes moved to Jamie.
“They threatened him.”
Jamie went pale.
Mom explained that two days after her arrest, Sheriff Brennan visited her holding cell.
He showed her a photograph of Jamie sleeping in our grandmother’s house.
Then one of me walking to high school.
“He said if I mentioned the ledger, there would be two more funerals.”
My anger collapsed under the weight of it.
Mom had spent eight years carrying that alone.
Rebecca sat back down.
“Where did you burn it?”
“In our fireplace.”
“Did you watch every page burn?”
Mom hesitated.
“No.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Who lit the fire?”
“I did.”
“Who cleaned the fireplace afterward?”
My mother’s face changed.
“Aaron’s brother.”
We all froze.
Uncle Patrick.
The man who organized Dad’s funeral.
The man who brought groceries after Mom’s arrest.
The man who told us to trust the prosecution because “the truth would come out.”
The man who moved to Arizona six months later.
I remembered something.
“Patrick used to collect old books.”
Rebecca looked at me.
“What?”
“He hated throwing them away.”
Agent Lane was already making a call.
Patrick Cross lived in Scottsdale.
Federal agents reached his house at 6:20 the next morning.
It was empty.
Neighbors said he had left two days earlier.
His bank account was drained.
His car was found at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
But no record showed him boarding a flight.
“He knew,” I said.
Rebecca nodded.
“Someone warned him.”
“Reed?”
“In custody.”
“Caldwell?”
“In custody.”
“Brennan?”
“In surgery, guarded.”
Agent Lane looked troubled.
“There’s someone else.”
The conspiracy had always included someone else.
Someone powerful enough to know about federal operations.
Someone we hadn’t identified.
Then Jamie said, “Grandma.”
Every adult turned.
“What about Grandma?” I asked.
Our paternal grandmother, Margaret Cross, had died four years earlier.
Jamie frowned.
“Uncle Patrick came to her funeral.”
“I remember.”
“He gave me a book.”
“What book?”
“The pirate book.”
My blood went cold.
Dad’s old treasure-hunt stories.
“Where is it?”
“At our house.”
Federal agents drove us back under escort.
Reporters packed the street.
Inside Jamie’s closet, beneath old board games, sat a faded hardcover called Blackbeard’s Lost Gold.
Patrick had written a message inside.
FOR JAMIE. EVERY TREASURE NEEDS A GOOD HIDING PLACE.
The spine felt too thick.
Agent Lane cut it carefully.
Inside were eleven pages from the ledger.
Not all of it.
Enough.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Initials.
E.V.
Payments totaling $3.8 million.
Rebecca stared.
“I know those initials.”
“Who?”
Before she answered, the front window exploded.
Everyone dropped.
A bullet buried itself in the wall.
Agents rushed outside.
A black SUV accelerated away.
Nobody was hit.
But another bullet had punched through the kitchen cabinet.
Inside the hole was an old family photograph.
Dad.
Patrick.
A third man.
Standing beside a fishing boat.
On the back, someone had written:
Aaron, Patrick & Senator Elias Voss — Summer 2008.
E.V.
United States Senator Elias Voss.
May you like
A man currently preparing to run for governor.
And according to every newspaper in Ohio, the politician expected to win by a landslide.
