Chapter 1 - The Beeping Behind the Door
The sound coming from Unit 17 was slow and mechanical.
Beep.
Three seconds.
Beep.
Three seconds.
My first thought was a bomb.
Apparently the FBI agent read that thought on my face.
“It isn't an explosive.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
“That isn't comforting.”
For the first time, something almost like sympathy crossed her face.
“My name is Special Agent Nora Bennett.”
She kept her badge visible.
“Your father contacted me eleven months ago.”
I stared at her.
“My father was a retired accountant.”
“No.”
“What?”
“He was an accountant.”
“He was many things.”
My phone continued ringing.
MOM
Agent Bennett pointed toward it.
“Turn it off.”
“I need to know she's okay.”
“If she's okay, turning off your phone for thirty minutes won't hurt her.”
“And if she's not?”
“Then answering may tell the wrong person exactly where you are.”
I looked toward the storage entrance.
Security cameras.
Chain-link fence.
Dark highway.
Suddenly everything felt staged.
“Is my mother in danger?”
Bennett's expression gave me nothing.
“Open the unit.”
I held up the key.
“Why can't you?”
“Because your father required that you open it.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“It will.”
I walked toward Unit 17.
The brass key slid into the padlock.
My hands were shaking badly enough that I missed once.
Then twice.
Finally—
click.
I pulled the lock free.
Agent Bennett stepped beside me.
“Slowly.”
I raised the metal door.
The beeping grew louder.
Inside was not what I expected.
No stacks of cash.
No guns.
No secret body.
There was a folding table.
Three metal filing cabinets.
A laptop.
A battery-powered electronic device producing the beeping.
And directly in the center of the room—
a wooden chair.
Someone was sitting in it.
My heart stopped.
“Dad?”
Raymond Mercer looked up.
Alive.
Pale.
Thinner than three days earlier.
But alive.
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.
He stood.
“Julian.”
I stumbled backward.
My shoulder hit the metal door frame.
“No.”
“Son—”
“No.”
My father stopped.
I looked at Agent Bennett.
Then him.
Then back at her.
“What the hell is this?”
Dad looked terrible.
His gray hair was disheveled.
Dark circles sat beneath his eyes.
He wore jeans and a brown sweater instead of the suit I'd seen him “buried” in.
I remembered that suit.
I remembered standing beside the viewing room.
I remembered touching his cold hand.
Or believing I had.
I remembered Mom crying into my shoulder.
Your father is gone, sweetheart.
I stared at him.
“I saw your body.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“You saw what I arranged for you to see.”
Rage replaced shock.
“You made me bury you.”
“I know.”
“My children cried for their grandfather.”
“I know.”
“My mother—”
I stopped.
Dad's face changed.
That was enough.
“You did this because of Mom.”
He looked at Bennett.
She nodded.
Dad said:
“Close the door.”
I didn't move.
“Julian.”
“No. You don't get to give orders right now.”
Fair.
Dad nodded.
Bennett lowered the storage door herself.
The beeping continued.
I pointed at the device.
“What is that?”
“A signal monitor,” Bennett said. “Your phone was transmitting.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Your location.”
I pulled it from my pocket.
“Phones do that.”
“Not like this.”
She held out her hand.
I gave it to her.
She removed the case.
Inside was a wafer-thin black device.
Not part of the phone.
“What is that?”
“A tracker.”
My mouth went dry.
“Who put it there?”
Dad answered.
“I don't know.”
“Then why did you tell me not to go home?”
“Because the most likely place it was installed was your house.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was screaming.
“My house?”
Dad nodded.
“You, Celeste, and the kids need to stay away from it tonight.”
I moved toward him.
“What did you do?”
His face crumpled.
“I found something.”
“What?”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
That number hit me.
The gravedigger had said twenty years.
Dad walked toward the filing cabinet.
“I need you to understand that what I'm going to tell you will make you question almost everything about our family.”
“I already attended your fake funeral today.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he opened the top drawer.
Inside were photographs.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Buildings.
License plates.
People.
Checks.
Bank statements.
My father removed one photograph.
He handed it to me.
A much younger Raymond stood outside a warehouse beside another man.
I recognized that man.
Uncle Victor.
My mother's older brother.
Victor Lang.
Successful developer.
Family patriarch.
The man who paid for college tuition for half my cousins.
The man who gave Celeste and me $20,000 toward our first house.
The man currently stood back at the cemetery comforting my mother.
“What about Victor?”
Dad didn't answer.
He handed me another photograph.
Victor stood beside three men I didn't recognize.
On the back, a date:
October 14, 2004.
Then another photograph.
A burned building.
“What's this?”
“Newark.”
“What happened?”
“Warehouse fire.”
“So?”
“Three people died.”
I looked at Bennett.
She said:
“The official finding was accidental electrical ignition.”
Dad added:
“It wasn't.”
I stared.
“How do you know?”
“Because I helped hide the money connected to it.”
Silence.
I felt something inside me fall.
Dad sat.
“When you were a child, I worked for Victor.”
“I know.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You know I handled accounting for Lang Development.”
“Yes.”
“What you don't know is that Victor used legitimate construction projects to move money for organized theft, insurance fraud, bribery, and eventually something much worse.”
My skin went cold.
“The warehouse?”
Dad nodded.
“The building was heavily insured. Victor needed it gone.”
“You're saying Uncle Victor burned it?”
“I am saying he ordered an arson.”
“People died.”
“He was told the building would be empty.”
“That doesn't make it better.”
“I know.”
“Did you know?”
“Not until afterward.”
Dad looked at his hands.
“I found irregular payments. Victor told me to correct the books.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
The word landed heavily.
No excuses.
No heroic revision.
Yes.
My father had helped.
“Why?”
“I was thirty-seven. You were eight. Your mother was pregnant with the baby we later lost.”
I remembered vaguely.
Mom never talked about that pregnancy.
Dad continued.
“We had debt. Victor paid well. And I was a coward.”
Agent Bennett said nothing.
Dad looked at me.
“I told myself accounting wasn't violence.”
He swallowed.
“I was wrong.”
My phone on the table suddenly lit.
Incoming message.
Not Mom.
CELESTE
I grabbed it.
Where are you? Your mom says you disappeared. Victor is here. Kids are asking for you. Call me.
My heart stopped.
“Celeste is at my parents' house.”
Dad stood so quickly the chair fell.
“What?”
“She took the kids there after the funeral.”
Agent Bennett grabbed her phone.
“Give me the address.”
Dad was already moving.
“Julian, listen to me carefully.”
“What?”
His face looked more frightened than it had all evening.
“Victor doesn't know I'm alive.”
A horrible understanding began forming.
Dad pointed at the photographs.
“He believes all of this evidence died with me.”
I stared at Celeste's message.
Victor was with my wife.
With my children.
And my mother had told me to come home alone.
I looked at Dad.
“Is Mom working with him?”
Dad's silence answered before his words did.
“I don't know.”
Then the signal monitor changed.
The slow beep became rapid.
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
Agent Bennett looked at the display.
Her expression hardened.
“What?”
She reached for her weapon.
“The tracker just started transmitting at full strength.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning whoever is watching it knows you've stopped moving.”
Dad looked toward the storage door.
May you like
Then Bennett said:
“And they're close.”
