Reed did not let anyone leave the house.
Two patrol cars arrived first, lights washing the broken window in alternating blue and red. Then came the evidence team, moving through my living room with cameras, gloves, numbered markers, and the detached efficiency of people trained to make violence look measurable.
I sat at the kitchen table.
Glass still glittered in my hair.
Frank sat across from me with an ice pack against his mouth where Ross had hit him.
Neither of us spoke.
Everything I wanted to ask him had become too large for language.
My husband was alive.
My father might be alive.
Someone had fired at my house.
And somewhere beneath all of it was a lie Frank had still not finished telling me.
Reed returned forty minutes later.
“The wallet is Howard Harper’s.”
I stared at him.
Frank looked down.
Reed continued.
“Driver’s license, two old photographs, a medical insurance card issued under an alias, and a handwritten emergency contact number.”
“Whose number?” I asked.
Reed looked at Frank.
Frank’s face did not change.
“Mine.”
I laughed once.
It came out wrong.
“Of course it is.”
Frank started to speak.
I raised a hand.
“Not yet.”
He stopped.
Reed sat beside me.
“The wallet may have been planted. We found no fingerprints on the vehicle that clearly belong to Howard. Steering wheel and door handles were wiped.”
“Blood?” Frank asked.
Reed studied him.
“How did you know there was blood?”
Frank’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t.”
“You asked.”
“Because whoever abandoned the car may have been injured.”
Reed said nothing for several seconds.
Then he answered.
“There was blood on the rear floor mat.”
Diane came in from the hallway.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Ross stood behind her.
“It could be Dad’s.”
Everyone looked at Frank.
He lowered the ice pack.
“I’m not bleeding.”
“I meant Howard,” Ross said.
The word Dad hung between them strangely.
For most of Diane and Ross’s lives, Frank had been the only man who deserved it.
For me, Howard had been.
Now both identities had become uncertain in different ways.
Reed told us the vehicle was registered to a shell company.
Joanna had already traced it.
Crescent Property Services.
Another branch of the same family of companies that appeared in Thomas’s ledgers.
My old life kept returning under new names.
Frank finally said, “They’re cleaning up.”
“Who?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“The people Thomas kept records on.”
“That answer is becoming convenient.”
“I know.”
“No, Frank. You keep saying that as though recognizing the damage is the same as repairing it.”
His face tightened.
Diane glanced away.
Ross leaned against the counter.
Nobody interrupted me.
“You knew Howard was alive. You met him. You knew Thomas was alive. You knew Margaret was alive. You staged your own death. You let me bury someone else. Now bullets are coming through my window, and every time I ask who is behind it, you say ‘they.’”
Frank stared at the tabletop.
“Give me a name.”
He didn’t.
I stood.
“Then get out.”
Diane whispered, “Eileen.”
I looked at her.
“This is my house.”
Frank slowly rose.
Reed intervened.
“He can’t leave yet.”
“Fine. Then put him somewhere I don’t have to look at him.”
Frank’s eyes met mine.
There was no anger in them.
That somehow made it worse.
My sister took him into the dining room.
The evidence team continued working around us.
At 6:20 in the morning, Joanna arrived carrying three folders and two cups of gas-station coffee.
She set one cup in front of Reed and ignored the other until I took it.
“You need to see this.”
I almost laughed.
Everyone had been saying that for twelve hours.
Joanna opened the first folder.
Crescent Property Services had been formed nine years earlier.
Initial director: Gregory Hale.
That name meant nothing to me.
Frank, from the dining room, said quietly, “I know him.”
I turned.
He was standing in the doorway.
I did not tell him to go back.
Joanna looked at him.
“How?”
“He worked with Howard.”
My heart tightened.
“Doing what?”
Frank came closer.
“Howard told me Gregory helped him gather evidence.”
“Was Gregory at the clinic?”
“No.”
“Then why is his company connected to the car that fired at us?”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”
Joanna opened another file.
Gregory Hale had died eighteen months earlier.
Officially.
Frank swore.
I looked at him.
“Another dead person?”
Reed said, “At this point, I’m not assuming anyone is dead without personally checking.”
Nobody laughed.
Joanna had found something more.
Gregory Hale’s company had continued operating after his death.
Payments moved through it every month.
One recipient appeared repeatedly.
Mercer Consulting.
Ross frowned.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Neither had Frank.
Diane asked, “Mercer as in us?”
Joanna nodded.
“Registered six years ago.”
“To whom?”
She slid a document across the table.
Owner: Helena Mercer.
Frank stopped breathing.
I had never heard that name.
Ross had.
“Grandma?”
Diane turned toward him.
“What?”
Ross stared at Frank.
“Grandma Helen.”
Frank looked as though someone had struck him harder than Ross had.
“My mother died in 1991.”
Joanna tapped the paperwork.
“Then either someone used her identity, or she didn’t.”
The room became very still.
Frank grabbed the registration form.
“This is impossible.”
I watched him read it twice.
The man who had orchestrated half the impossible events of the previous twenty-four hours suddenly looked like me.
Confused.
Afraid.
Betrayed by his own history.
“There’s a signature,” Joanna said.
Frank stared at it.
“My mother’s.”
“Certain?”
“Yes.”
Diane sat down.
Ross muttered, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Joanna produced another page.
Mercer Consulting had received money from companies linked to Thomas Vale.
But unlike the suspicious transfers into Ross’s network, these payments were small and regular.
Investigative expenses.
Travel reimbursements.
Document storage.
Medical bills.
It did not look like profit.
It looked like operations.
Frank’s mother, or someone using her identity, had been financing an investigation.
“Into what?” I asked.
Joanna turned another page.
“Thomas.”
Frank frowned.
“My mother never knew Thomas.”
“Maybe she did.”
That sentence hung there.
The relationships were shifting again.
No longer two families colliding by accident.
More like roots underground.
Crossing long before anyone noticed.
Joanna had also examined the documents from the vault beneath my basement.
Several records were written in code.
She believed the codes matched payments in Thomas’s ledger.
One entry appeared again and again.
HM.
At first she assumed it meant Helen Mercer.
Then she found another page.
HM — CONTACT THROUGH H.H.
Howard Harper.
My father knew Frank’s mother.
Frank stared at me.
We were both thinking the same thing.
Our parents had known one another before we did.
Not just through the Lake Crescent fire.
Earlier.
Much earlier.
Reed’s phone rang.
He listened, asked two questions, then ended the call.
“The blood in the abandoned vehicle belongs to an elderly male.”
My stomach tightened.
“Howard?”
“We need a comparison sample.”
My sister spoke.
“There might be one.”
Everyone looked at her.
She wiped her palms against her trousers.
“When Dad supposedly died, Eileen gave me some of his things from the hospital.”
I stared at her.
“You kept those?”
She nodded.
“His shaving kit. His comb.”
“Why?”
Her eyes filled.
“I couldn’t throw them away.”
Twenty minutes later she brought a wooden box from her car.
Inside was Howard’s old comb.
Gray hairs remained caught between the teeth.
Reed sealed it for testing.
Frank watched.
Something about his expression bothered me.
“Did you already have Howard’s DNA?”
He hesitated.
That was answer enough.
I closed my eyes.
“Frank.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed to confirm something.”
“What?”
His silence returned.
I slammed my hand against the table.
“Enough.”
Everyone froze.
Frank looked at me.
“What were you confirming?”
His voice dropped.
“That Howard was actually Howard.”
The absurdity made me stare.
“What does that mean?”
Frank sat down.
“When I found him two weeks ago, I recognized him. But he had documents under another name, and Margaret warned me Thomas had used doubles before.”
Ross laughed in disbelief.
“Doubles?”
“Not theatrical ones. People with similar appearance. Borrowed identities. Old photos used on new papers. Thomas’s network survived because they understood that records matter more than faces.”
Frank had secretly taken a drinking glass Howard used.
He sent it for DNA testing.
The result confirmed a parent-child relationship between Howard and my sister.
My sister went pale.
“What?”
I turned toward her.
Frank looked confused too.
“You said Howard wasn’t Eileen’s biological father,” Reed said.
“He wasn’t.”
“Then why would Howard show as the biological father of Eileen’s sister?”
Everyone looked at my sister.
She shook her head.
“No.”
My stomach turned.
She was three years younger than me.
Same mother.
Same father, I had always believed.
But if Frank was right—
Howard Harper had fathered my sister.
Thomas Vale had fathered me.
That part could still make sense.
Except Frank’s expression suggested it didn’t.
“There was another result,” he said.
I waited.
“The lab flagged a second relationship.”
“What relationship?”
Frank swallowed.
“Howard’s sample showed a close biological link to Thomas Vale.”
Nobody spoke.
Even Reed looked startled.
“How close?”
Frank’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Brothers.”
The kitchen seemed to tilt.
Thomas Vale and Howard Harper.
Brothers.
One violent.
One gentle.
One my biological father.
One the man who raised me.
My entire life had been built between two brothers who never told me they were related.
I looked at Frank.
“You knew this?”
“Only for twelve days.”
“Only.”
“I was trying to verify it.”
“You met Howard and didn’t ask?”
“I did.”
“What did he say?”
Frank looked toward the broken window.
“He said Thomas was never supposed to find out.”
That answer opened something worse.
If Howard and Thomas were brothers, then my mother’s affair with Thomas had occurred inside a family relationship everyone had deliberately hidden.
Margaret had married one brother.
My mother had married the other.
Then my mother had an affair with Thomas.
Their children had grown up around the consequences.
Diane and I shared Thomas as a father.
My sister and I shared a mother.
Ross—
I looked at him.
“Who was Ross’s biological father?”
Ross straightened.
“Dad.”
Frank shook his head slowly.
“We never tested.”
Ross stared at him.
“Why would you say that?”
Frank did not answer.
Diane did.
“Because Margaret lied about everything.”
Ross’s face went gray.
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze.
Reed drew his weapon and moved toward the front hall.
A uniformed officer looked through the glass.
“It’s ours.”
Reed opened the door.
The officer handed him an evidence bag.
Inside was a phone.
“Found in the abandoned vehicle.”
Reed examined the screen.
No passcode.
One recent photograph.
He opened it.
His expression changed.
“Eileen.”
He brought it to me.
The image had been taken inside some kind of warehouse.
Howard sat in a metal chair.
Blood streaked one side of his face.
He was holding that morning’s newspaper.
Alive.
At least when the photograph was taken.
Behind him, painted on the wall, were three letters.
HMC.
Joanna stepped closer.
“Helena Mercer Consulting.”
Frank stared at the picture.
“My mother’s company.”
Then Reed noticed the message attached to the photograph.
He read it aloud.
FRANK KNOWS WHERE WE ARE.
I looked at my husband.
He looked genuinely terrified.
“No.”
Reed’s voice hardened.
“What does that mean?”
Frank shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
The phone rang in Reed’s hand.
Unknown number.
He answered on speaker.
No one spoke.
For several seconds, all we heard was breathing.
Then Howard’s voice.
Weak.
Ragged.
But unmistakable.
“Eileen?”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Dad?”
A sound escaped him.
Half sob.
Half laugh.
Then another voice came onto the line.
A woman.
Old.
Controlled.
Familiar to Frank before it was familiar to anyone else.
He whispered, “Mother?”
The woman laughed softly.
“Hello, Franklin.”
Frank’s face drained of color.
His mother, dead for thirty-five years, continued.
“You’ve made quite a mess.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Frank’s Mother Had Been Alive for Thirty-Five Years, and Her Reason for Taking Howard Changed Who the Real Enemy Was
Before the Funeral Flowers Had Wilted, Frank’s Children Began Dividing My Home as Though I Had Already Disappeared
Part 9 of 35
