“What do you know about my father? Because there’s no gray about it. Only black and white.”
“Only what Delilah told me.”
She huffs sarcastically. “He was her hero, so I’m sure she didn’t tell you the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?”
“He was a liar.” She’s quick to answer. “I knew him to be a liar and a thief at times. I knew him to be … cruel.”
As I turn to glance at the clock, Cadence sees and her strength leaves her.
“Delilah never knew, but our mother had just cause for what she did as far as I’m concerned.”
“Delilah never knew what?”
“She never knew what kind of man he was.” She swallows thickly, the sound eating up the silence. “It’s strange how she doesn’t remember. How he was her hero, yet he was my villain, all in the same scene.”
“He hurt her?” I surmise. “He hurt your mother?” She only nods in answer and reaches again for the bottle of water.
“Did he ever hurt you?”
“Not directly, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt me.”
“Whoever has your sister … I don’t think it has anything to do with your father or your mother,” I tell her honestly.
“I know … but why would anyone go after her? Is it the threat? This Marcus?” She doesn’t contain the exasperation clearly getting the best of her. She needs answers, but don’t we all? “Brass or whoever it was who left that note in her office? Who? Who!”
It takes great effort to keep my expression unmoving as she lists suspects and tells me her theories.
Neither of us make any progress. We can’t help each other, and that truth is evident to both of us before the hour is through.
“I came to tell you I don’t think it’s Marcus and to look somewhere else. The cops think it’s Marcus, which is ridiculous.”
“What do you mean? Who told you that?”
“That detective with the beard … Skov. I told him Marcus doesn’t exist, it’s just a name used as a cover,” she says incredulously and I can’t fix my expression fast enough. With a tilt of her head, I can tell she knows that I know something about Marcus.
I want to tell her; I want to confess everything. If for no other reason than to rid myself of the burden of these sins and lies. They’ve piled up and now they’re drowning me.
I still don’t know who has Delilah. I don’t know how to get her back. But I know it’s because of myself and Marcus. It’s because I couldn’t walk away from her.
Because I brought her into something that was slowly killing me.
“What do you know? She told me Marcus wasn’t real. I asked her, and she told me it was just a name whispered by liars to hide evidence.”
“When was that?” I can’t help but to question, and her gaze narrows.
“Years ago. I told the cops there’s someone else behind those murders. It isn’t one man, and Delilah told me that years ago.”
“I don’t know about that.” I decide right then to hide behind lies. She can’t be brought into this.
“What do you know?” she asks with a look of ridicule.
“Nothing, but you need to stop this. You need to stay away and let us do our job.”
Shaking her head, she stands abruptly, anger taking over. “I can’t—”
“You need to stay far away,” I say, cutting her off, striding to the door of the hotel in an instant and opening the door as wide as it’ll go.
“I mean it, Cadence.” I warn her like I should have warned her sister, regret lacing each word, “Stay far away.”
Marcus
Fifteen years ago
Six years after abduction
They’re all pawns.
I trace over the words at the top of the page in my notebook: They’re all pawns. Writing down three more names to the list on the rightmost side of the yellowed pad with deep strokes of the blue ink pen, I pause to look at the tally.
There are three columns and over fifty names total. Three different groups of men, but all of them responsible for atrocities in the name of unity and solidarity. Everywhere I’ve gone there are always dogs like the ones I trailed today. Men, and even women, who go along with the men in power and do their bidding without question. It doesn’t take much to get them to move. A nod, a promise of ambition, and the desire for one man to have something done.
He never says how. The men in charge never give those details, and that’s