to know. Maybe you just want to move forward with your life from here.”
I haven’t spoken to Drew or Vivian since the night we left their home. Gray has asked his father to buy out his interest in Powers and Powers, and Drew has agreed. Drew has refused to talk any further about his relationship to Grief Intervention Services, how he knew about Victory’s paternity, or to offer any explanation of the things that have happened to me. Gray has tried to find some explanations through avenues of his own but has come up against wall after wall. We have both decided that for the sake of our family, of protecting Victory, there are things we’ll just have to live with never knowing.
“I thought I was going to be in the dark for the rest of my life,” Harrison says, pacing the room. “But I had a visitor the other day to my new office.”
“Who?”
“An old friend of yours,” he says with a wry smile. “She’s no friend of mine, of course. But she brought me this.”
“Ella?” I ask eagerly. “Where is she? The hurricane shutters are down on her house. She’s been gone for weeks. I haven’t had a call or an e-mail. We’re going to have to leave without saying good-bye.”
He gives a cryptic shake of his head. “I don’t know what her plans are. I’m sure you’ll hear from her, though, Annie. One of these days.”
As he takes another piece of paper from his pocket and gives it to me, my headache intensifies. This time it’s a picture, a blurry black-and-white photograph of two boys in fatigues, arms around each other’s shoulders, one smiling, one grim. It takes me a second to figure out who I’m looking at. For a second, I think one of the men is Gray. But then I recognize them—Drew Powers and Alan Parker, younger, thinner, barely resembling the men they became. Someone had scribbled in the corner, Bassac River, 1967, Vietnam.
“I don’t understand,” I say, feeling suddenly as though the ground has shifted beneath me. “What does this mean?”
“They served together on SEAL Team One in Vietnam. They’ve known each other most of their lives.”
I’m struggling with this information, trying to understand how everything fits together. But my head is aching so badly I can hardly concentrate.
“I have a theory,” he says. “Want to hear it?”
I don’t really, but I find myself giving a half nod.
“I think, years ago, when Alan Parker wanted revenge for the murder of his daughter, he came to Drew, his old war buddy. Drew had already founded Powers and Powers at that point, and it was a thriving private military firm. Based on some digging I’ve done, I think Drew hired out one of his men to Parker to track down Marlowe Geary—a man named Simon Briggs. Later, when Parker started Grief Intervention Services, Powers and Powers provided the muscle needed to help people face those who had injured them or their loved ones. Vigilantes, basically.”
I think about this. It makes sense somehow to me that they knew each other. I can see them, both controlling, arrogant men, thinking that what they did was motivated by love for their children, never understanding that love and control are two different things.
“Then it was just a coincidence that my father met with Gray and asked him to help me?” I say with a shake of my head. “No.”
Harrison hangs his head for a second. He seems to be debating whether to say what he wants to say. Then, “Your father, Teddy March, also known as Bear. He served on the same SEAL team in Vietnam.
I laugh at this. “No,” I say. “Not my father.”
But then I remember all the times he talked about the Navy SEALs, all his Vietnam stories. I thought they were lies. I never once believed him.
Detective Harrison has another photograph. In the picture I see my father, Drew, and some other men I don’t recognize sitting in a boat heading down a gray river surrounded by jungle. They are grim, intent, uncomfortable. My father is a boy with the stubble of a beard, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He is lithe, muscular, with dark eyes and square jaw. Drew looks like a heavier, less appealing version of my husband—like a young bulldog with a stern brow and mean eyes.
“These men, these fathers, all searching for their kids,” says Harrison, drifting over toward the glass doors leading to the deck. “Alan Parker’s daughter murdered by