I stepped closer. “Grieve. That’s what my father wrote. Not a partner’s name. A warning.”
His eyes widened.
“A warning about what?”
I pulled the blue bag off my shoulder and unzipped the main compartment. Inside, at the bottom, there was a folder. I had known it was there since I packed it.
I pulled it out.
“This is what my father was investigating,” I said. “The man he was supposed to expose.”
Kade looked at the folder. He didn’t reach for it.
“What’s in there?”
“Everything. Names, dates, transactions. Six years of evidence that somehow got buried.”
Kade’s face was pale.
“My father.”
I looked at him.
“Your father isn’t the one who buried it.”
He stared at me.
“What?”
“The man who tipped off the ring. The man who got my father taken. It wasn’t a stranger.”
Kade’s mouth opened. Closed.
“It was someone close to the case. Someone who knew the meeting was happening. Someone who knew exactly where my father would be that night.”
The parking lot was silent.
“He’s still out there,” I said. “And I think your father knows who it is.”
Kade took a step back.
“No.”
“He’s protecting them.”
“No.”
“He’s been protecting them for six years.”
Kade shook his head. He was shaking again. Not with tears this time. With something else.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He looked at me. Then at the folder. Then at the gym behind us, where his father was still standing inside.
“I think my father is the one who set yours up.”
The words hit me like a bullet.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stared at him.
“What?”
He swallowed hard.
“The night it happened. My dad got a phone call. Right before we left. He stepped away to take it. When he came back, he was different.”
“Different how?”
“Nervous. Quiet. He told me to stay in the car no matter what. He never did that before.”
I felt my hands curl into fists.
“So you think—”
“I don’t think. I know.”
He looked at me with those red eyes.
“I heard him on the phone. Just one sentence. He said, ‘We’re coming. Make sure he’s alone.'”
The world tilted.
I put my hand on the dumpster to keep from falling.
He had set my father up.
Kade’s father.
His partner.
The man who was supposed to protect him.
For six years, I had been looking for the wrong person.
For six years, the man who had taken my father was the man who was supposed to save him.
And he had been standing in front of me the entire time.
I took a breath. Then another.
“What do you want me to do?” Kade asked.
His voice was small.
I looked at the folder in my hand. At the gym behind me. At the badge lying somewhere in the grass.
“I want the truth,” I said.
“Even if it hurts?”
“Especially if it hurts.”
He nodded slowly.
“Then we need to go back inside.”
I looked toward the gym door.
The door where his father was waiting.
The door where the man who had destroyed my family was standing, probably right now, thinking of another lie to tell.
“Okay.”
We started walking.
Kade stopped after a few steps.
“Wait.”
I turned.
He pointed at the ground.
His father was standing in the doorway. Watching us.
He had been there for a while, I realized. He had heard everything.
“Dad,” Kade said.
His father stepped out of the doorway. The light from inside the gym cast a long shadow behind him.
“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” he said.
“Find out what?” I asked.
He looked at the folder in my hand.
“That I’m the reason your father is dead.”
The word hit me like a freight train.
Dead.
My father was dead.
I had always known it, somehow. In that place beneath words, beneath hope, I had always known.
But hearing it out loud—hearing it from the mouth of the man who had caused it—that was different.
That made it real.
“How?” I asked. My voice was barely a whisper.
He took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“They took him to a warehouse outside the city. I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to get him out.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I was followed. They knew I would try. They threatened my family.”
“Your family.”
“Yes.”
“So you saved yourself.”
“I saved my son.”
Kade let out a sound beside me—a choked sob.
“You told me you didn’t know what happened.”
His father looked at him. “I know.”
“You told me he was taken and we just had to disappear.”
“I know.”
“You lied to me. Every day for six years. You lied.”
His father’s face twisted. “I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From the truth. From them. From everything.”
“Who is ‘them’?” I asked.
He looked at me. “The men who killed your father. They’re still out there. And they’re still looking for the evidence.”
He pointed at the folder in my hand.
“That’s what they want. That’s what got your father killed.”
I looked at the folder.
Then at Kade.
Then at the man who had destroyed everything.
“If this is what they want,” I said, “then maybe I should give it to them.”
He shook his head.
“No. That’s not—”
“Or maybe,” I continued, “I should take it to the police.”
“You can’t. They have people everywhere. It’s not safe.”
“The only thing that’s ever been unsafe,” I said, “is trusting you.”
He didn’t have a response for that.
I looked at Kade.
“You knew.”
He nodded.
“You knew what your father did.”
“I figured it out.”
“When?”
“A year ago. I found some letters he had hidden.”
“You didn’t tell anyone.”
“Who would I tell?”
