Chapter 17 - At My Father’s Grave
Police surrounded the cemetery before sunrise.
Voss was already there.
He stood beside my father’s grave holding a leather folder.
No gun visible.
No car nearby.
Just an old man in a dark coat looking down at the name of the person he had blamed for eighteen years.
Ortiz ordered him to raise his hands.
He smiled.
Then he looked at me.
“You brought an army to a cemetery.”
“You kidnapped my wife and my daughter.”
“I never touched your wife.”
“You built the plan.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Claire stepped from behind an unmarked police vehicle before anyone could stop her.
Voss stared at her.
For the first time, something human crossed his face.
“Claire.”
“Don’t say my name like you know me.”
He held up the folder.
“Your grandfather left this with me.”
“My grandfather is dead.”
“So is the truth, usually.”
Ortiz shouted for him to put the folder down.
He did.
Slowly.
Inside were letters between Voss and Claire’s grandfather proving the family had known about his crimes long before Claire was born.
But there was no exoneration.
No proof my father framed him.
Quite the opposite.
One letter begged Voss to confess after the warehouse deaths.
Another called him a coward.
Voss read Claire’s face and realized she understood.
His entire revenge had been built around a lie he told himself.
“My brother chose the Mercers over me,” he whispered.
“No,” Claire said. “He chose the truth.”
Voss’s shoulders dropped.
Then his hand moved toward his coat.
Police surged forward.
It was not a gun.
It was a small remote.
Ortiz ripped it from his hand.
Voss smiled again.
May you like
“You should ask what it controls.”
Thirty miles away, an alarm activated at our house.
