Chapter 4
Detective Samuel Price survived.
Barely.
That was all Dad would tell me.
By Saturday morning, our house looked like a government building.
Two guards at the front entrance.
Another near the back garden.
Cameras being checked.
Cars being searched.
Dad canceled every plan I had for the weekend.
I wasn't allowed outside without security.
I hated it.
But I was scared enough not to argue.
At 8:13 a.m., Noah sent me twelve pictures from the old Westbridge yearbook.
I opened the first one.
My mother was sixteen.
And she looked almost exactly like me.
Same dark hair.
Same eyes.
Same crooked smile.
I had seen photographs of her before, obviously.
But not like this.
Not standing inside the same halls I walked every day.
In one photograph she wore a Westbridge debate-team jacket.
In another she stood beside three students beneath a banner that read SPRING FUNDRAISER 2000.
I recognized one of them immediately.
Richard Blake.
Madison's father.
He was seventeen, thin, with longer hair.
His arm was around my mother's waist.
Beside them stood a girl whose name appeared underneath.
Victoria Blake.
Richard's younger sister.
The fourth student was my father.
Daniel Carter.
My breath caught.
Dad had told me he met Mom in college.
The caption proved that was a lie.
I zoomed in.
Dad was eighteen.
Serious even then.
Mom stood between him and Richard.
All three were smiling.
I read Noah's message.
YOUR DAD WENT THERE TOO.
Another picture arrived.
Senior winter formal.
My mother dancing with Richard.
Dad in the background, watching them.
I felt sick.
I went downstairs.
Dad was in his office with Lauren and two security consultants.
I didn't knock.
I walked in and placed my phone on the desk.
"How long are you planning to keep lying to me?"
Everyone stopped talking.
Dad looked at the photograph.
His shoulders dropped.
"Emily."
"You told me you met Mom in college."
Lauren quietly gathered her files.
"We'll give you two a minute."
"No."
I looked at her.
"Please stay."
Dad frowned.
"Emily."
"She's part of this, isn't she?"
Lauren glanced at him.
He nodded reluctantly.
She remained.
I swiped to the next photograph.
"Mom. Richard Blake. Victoria Blake. You."
Dad stared at it for a long time.
Then he sat down.
"We met at Westbridge."
"Why lie?"
"Because that period of our lives ended badly."
"How badly?"
He leaned back.
"Richard and I were friends."
That surprised me almost as much as everything else.
"Best friends," he continued. "Our families weren't wealthy then. Not like now. Richard's father owned a small hotel. My mother taught mathematics."
"What about Mom?"
"Her father was a judge."
I knew that part.
Grandpa Monroe died before I was born.
Dad continued.
"Richard started dating Evelyn during our junior year."
"And you loved her."
His eyes met mine.
"Yes."
I folded my arms.
"Did he know?"
"Eventually."
"What happened?"
Dad stared out the window.
"Your mother ended things with Richard. Months later, she and I started dating."
"Richard blamed you."
"Yes."
"Enough to hate you twenty years later?"
Dad's mouth tightened.
"No. Not for that."
I looked toward Lauren.
She was watching Dad, not me.
"What aren't you telling me?"
Dad stood and walked toward the fireplace.
"Victoria died during our senior year."
I remembered the girl in the picture.
Bright smile.
Blonde hair.
Seventeen forever.
"How?"
"Car accident."
Every hair on my arms stood up.
"Like Mom?"
Dad turned toward me.
"No."
But the answer came too quickly.
I stepped closer.
"Who was driving?"
Nobody spoke.
"Who was driving?"
Dad looked directly at me.
"I was."
The room disappeared around me.
"What?"
"It was February. We had been at a party. Victoria wanted to go home. I offered to drive."
"Were you drinking?"
"No."
"Then what happened?"
"I lost control on black ice."
His voice had changed.
It sounded distant.
"The car hit a barrier. I survived. Victoria didn't."
I tried to process it.
"So Richard thinks you killed his sister."
"He did for a long time."
"For a long time?"
Dad looked at Lauren.
Then back at me.
"Because the police investigation later found that the brakes had been tampered with."
My stomach twisted.
"Someone tried to kill you?"
"Maybe."
"And killed Victoria instead."
"Yes."
"Who?"
"We never found out."
I thought of Detective Price.
The old files.
The texts.
"Was Detective Price involved?"
Dad nodded.
"He was a young officer assigned to the crash."
"And Mom?"
Dad's face changed again.
"What about her?"
"Her death. Was that car tampered with too?"
His silence crushed me.
I whispered, "Dad."
"Yes."
The word barely came out.
I stepped backward.
All those years.
All those birthdays without her.
Every time he'd said accident.
Every time he'd let me believe it was random.
"You knew."
"We learned after the crash."
"You told me another car ran a red light."
"There was another vehicle."
"But that's not the whole story."
"No."
"What happened?"
Dad pressed his hands against the desk.
"Your mother's brake line had been cut."
My throat closed.
I had to grip the chair beside me.
"Someone murdered Mom."
"We believe so."
"And you never told me?"
"You were six years old."
"I'm sixteen now!"
"I know."
"You had ten years!"
He flinched.
I had never shouted at him like that.
I didn't care.
"Who did it?"
"We don't know."
"You're lying again."
"I'm not."
"Then why is Richard Blake connected to all of this?"
Dad went silent.
That was enough.
I looked at Lauren.
"Tell me."
She didn't.
I laughed once, bitterly.
"Great. Everyone protects me by lying."
Dad moved toward me.
I stepped away.
"Don't."
He stopped.
My eyes burned, but I refused to cry.
"Did you think Mom's murder had something to do with Victoria?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because before Evelyn died, she contacted Detective Price."
"For what?"
Dad looked broken now.
"She told him she'd found something from our senior year."
"What?"
"A videotape."
I stared.
"A tape of what?"
"We never found it."
"But she told him?"
"She left Price a voicemail saying the tape proved the crash wasn't meant to kill me."
I frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Dad swallowed.
"It was meant to kill Victoria."
The room went silent.
My mind raced.
Richard's sister.
Someone intentionally sabotaged a car knowing she would be inside.
"Why would someone kill a seventeen-year-old girl?"
"That's the question we've been asking for twenty-five years."
"And Mom found the answer?"
"Maybe."
"But then she died."
Dad nodded.
I turned away.
My phone buzzed.
All three adults looked at it.
Unknown number.
I almost didn't open it.
Then I did.
A photograph loaded.
My mother.
Older now.
Maybe thirty.
She was standing outside a brick building beside Detective Price.
The timestamp in the corner was three days before she died.
Underneath the photograph were six words.
SHE KNEW WHO KILLED VICTORIA.
Another message arrived.
SO DOES YOUR FATHER.
I showed Dad.
He stared at the screen.
"That's impossible."
"What?"
"I've never seen this photograph."
Lauren took the phone.
"Where was this taken?"
Dad leaned closer.
His face changed.
"I know that building."
"Where?"
"Cambridge."
He grabbed his keys.
Lauren stepped in front of him.
"Daniel, no."
"What building?" I demanded.
Dad looked at me.
"A storage facility your mother rented before she died."
My heart began pounding.
"Did you search it?"
"Police did."
"And?"
"It was empty."
My phone vibrated again.
This time the message contained numbers.
B-117.
Then:
ASK WHAT THEY MISSED.
Dad and Lauren exchanged a look.
I knew immediately what it meant.
"That's a storage unit."
Lauren shook her head.
"We don't know that."
"Yes, we do."
Dad was already dialing.
"Get security downstairs."
I grabbed my jacket.
He stopped me.
"You're staying here."
"No."
"Emily."
"The person sending these texts wants me to know something."
"Or wants you somewhere vulnerable."
"Then we go with security."
"No."
I walked directly up to him.
"You kept Mom's murder from me for ten years. You don't get to shut me out again."
His jaw clenched.
For a moment I thought he would order the guards to physically stop me.
Instead he looked away.
Forty minutes later, our convoy pulled into a narrow street in Cambridge.
The storage facility had changed names twice since Mom died.
But the basement still contained old units.
B-117 existed.
The manager unlocked the outer corridor.
Dad stood in front of me while a security officer opened the metal door.
Inside was darkness.
A flashlight clicked on.
The unit looked empty.
Concrete floor.
Bare walls.
One rusted shelf.
Dad exhaled.
Then I noticed something.
Scratches on the floor.
Parallel lines beneath the shelf.
"Move that."
A guard shifted the shelf.
Behind it was a square section of wall painted slightly darker than the rest.
Lauren touched the edge.
"It's plywood."
They pried it open.
Inside the wall was a narrow cavity.
And inside the cavity was a red metal box.
Dad stared at it as if he were looking at a ghost.
May you like
On top, in my mother's handwriting, were two words.
FOR EMILY.
