My mother told me he took it when he left.
“How did Hannah get that?”
Claire touched it.
“My mother gave it to me after Samuel disappeared.”
“There’s nothing special about it.”
Daniel examined the edge.
“Maybe.”
He twisted the two halves.
The coin opened.
Inside was a microfilm strip.
Cole laughed in disbelief.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Claire covered her mouth.
My father had hidden the original evidence inside something no one would think to open.
For nearly forty years.
Victor had been searching for it.
Hannah had found it.
And now it hung around my six-year-old granddaughter’s neck.
We had the thing Victor wanted.
Which meant we finally had leverage.
I looked at Daniel.
“Can you copy it?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
Claire caught my arm.
“Mason, Victor will hurt her if he thinks we’re playing games.”
“I know.”
“What are you planning?”
“Something he taught me.”
She looked afraid to ask.
“What?”
I stared toward the rising sun.
“Always know the exits before you enter the room.”
Chapter 6
Fort Valley sat beneath the San Francisco Peaks, where the desert slowly surrendered to pines.
The old fort itself had become a private storage property years earlier.
Victor owned it through one of his companies.
Of course he did.
We arrived with a plan.
Not a perfect one.
Perfect plans did not exist.
Daniel had copied the microfilm and sent encrypted files to three journalists, two federal investigators outside Arizona, and an attorney in Nevada with instructions to release everything if we did not check in by noon.
Claire stayed with Ellie twenty miles away.
Iron Vale riders remained scattered across access roads, out of sight.
Cole and I went in alone.
The main building smelled like timber and dust.
Victor sat behind a long table.
Hannah sat across from him.
Alive.
My daughter.
I knew her immediately.
Not because I had ever seen her move.
Not because we shared obvious features.
Because she looked at me exactly the way Claire once had when she was trying not to show fear.
She was twenty-nine.
Dark hair.
Green eyes.
Bruise near one temple.
Wrists free.
Two men stood behind her.
Victor smiled.
“Mason.”
My heart pounded.
But my voice stayed steady.
“Let her go.”
Hannah stared at me.
“Dad?”
One word.
Twenty-nine years late.
It nearly broke me.
Victor noticed.
“Oh,” he said softly.
“That’s cruel.”
“Shut up.”
“Imagine learning you’re a father and grandfather in the same day.”
Cole stepped forward.
“You’ve got what you wanted.
Give us Hannah.”
Victor studied him.
“Still following Mason around, Cole?”
Cole smiled.
“Still hiding behind other people, Vic?”
Victor’s smile disappeared.
I placed the challenge coin on the table.
His eyes dropped.
There.
The first honest expression I had ever seen from him.
Fear.
“You found it.”
“Hannah did.”
Victor looked toward her.
“I underestimated you.”
Hannah replied calmly.
“Everyone does.”
Despite everything, pride hit me.
Victor extended his hand.
“The coin.”
“Hannah first.”
He laughed.
“You have never negotiated well.”
“Maybe I finally learned.”
He nodded to one man.
The man stepped away from Hannah.
She stood.
I moved toward her.
Victor raised a hand.
“Coin.”
I slid it halfway across the table.
Hannah moved faster.
Cole caught her arm and pulled her behind us.
Victor grabbed the coin.
He twisted it open.
Empty.
His face changed.
“You stupid—”
“The original is already gone.”
Victor stood.
His men moved.
Cole and I did not.
I looked at Victor.
“Files went out this morning.”
He froze.
“To who?”
“Enough people.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I think I’m starting to.”
“No.”
Victor slammed the coin onto the table.
“You think this is about money?”
“Hannah found your accounts.”
“She found crumbs.”
Hannah stepped beside me.
“What does that mean?”
Victor laughed.
A tired sound.
Then he looked at me.
“Your father said the same thing.”
My body went rigid.
“You killed him.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“No.”
Silence.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to ask a better question.”
Cole frowned.
“What question?”
Victor looked toward a door behind him.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
The door opened.
An old man entered.
Thin.
White hair.
Walking with a cane.
Scar along one cheek.
He looked close to eighty.
I stared.
The room tilted.
Somewhere inside me, a seven-year-old boy remembered a man lifting him onto his shoulders.
Teaching him how to tie fishing line.
Laughing behind a steering wheel.
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
The old man stopped.
His eyes filled with tears.
“Mason.”
My knees almost failed.
Hannah whispered: “Oh my God.”
Samuel Reed was alive.
My father.
The man I had spent forty-one years believing had abandoned me.
He stood twenty feet away.
Alive.
Victor watched us.
The satisfaction on his face told me something was still wrong.
I looked at Samuel.
“You left us.”
His face collapsed.
“No.”
“My mother said—”
“She was told I was gone.”
“By him?”
Samuel looked at Victor.
Then back at me.
“By me.”
That hurt worse.
“Why?”
Samuel lowered himself into a chair.
“Because I discovered what Crown Ridge had become.
Victor and I started it as legal aid.
We wanted to help families who couldn’t afford attorneys.”
Victor laughed quietly.
Samuel ignored him.
“Then money came.
Political connections.
People willing to pay for outcomes instead of justice.”
“You ran.”
“I tried to expose it.”
“You disappeared.”
“I was threatened.”
“So you abandoned your family.”
“Yes.”
The bluntness shocked me.
Samuel’s eyes filled.
“I told myself it protected you.
I told myself leaving was sacrifice.”
His voice broke.
“It was cowardice.”
No excuses.
No demand for forgiveness.
Just truth.
For some reason, that made it harder to hate him.
Victor leaned against the table.
“Touching.”
Hannah looked at him.
“Why is he here?”
Samuel answered.
“Because Victor has kept me close for years.”
“Prisoner?”