Chapter 18 - Caleb Voss
Caleb looked twenty years older than the man in my memory.
He met us in a secure federal office.
Lily came too.
He stared at me.
“Ward.”
“Voss.”
Keene moved him through identities.
Eventually Evelyn hired him unknowingly under one of those identities to manage internal risk accounts.
“I kept their books,” Caleb said. “And copied everything.”
“Why not come forward?”
“Because every time I tried, someone proved they knew where my sister lived.”
He created HVOSS17.
He watched Lily’s marriage.
He realized Richard was targeting North Ridge.
Then Easter happened.
“Did you know Richard would hurt her?”
Caleb looked at Lily.
“No.”
She studied him.
“Did you know he had hurt other women?”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
Lily’s face changed.
“You could have warned me.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
That was all.
He gave prosecutors his full archive.
Combined with Ben’s files, it completed the case.
Before leaving, Caleb handed me a folded piece of paper.
“Ben wrote this for you.”
My hands shook.
It was a note Ben had given Caleb the night before the crash.
Mike,
If this goes bad, don’t spend your life turning me into a reason to disappear.
Go be Lily’s dad.
That idiot knew me too well.
I sat there laughing and crying at the same time.
Lily read it over my shoulder.
“He called you Mike?”
“Only when he wanted to annoy me.”
She smiled.
Then she pointed at the second line.
“He literally told you not to disappear.”
“I noticed.”
“Took you fifteen years.”
“I noticed that too.”
Caleb stood to leave.
I stopped him.
“Why did you log in from Bellhaven that day?”
“To pull you toward the truth.”
“You could’ve called.”
He almost smiled.
“You never answered unknown numbers.”
Fair.
Then Lily asked him one last question.
“Who told Richard my father killed you?”
Caleb’s smile disappeared.
“Not Evelyn.”
“Then who?”
He looked at me.
“Richard’s father. Harrison.”
May you like
Harrison Whitmore had died five years earlier.
And according to Caleb, he had left behind a recorded confession.
