I SPENT 3 YEARS IN PRISON FOR A CRIME I NEVER COMMITTED. WHEN I RETURNED HOME, MY STEPMOTHER SAID MY FATHER WAS DEAD AND THREW ME OUT. THEN A CEMETERY GUARD REVEALED THE SECRET MY FATHER HAD LEFT BEHIND…

By the time I reached Evelyn's office, my shirt was soaked, my ribs ached, and the photograph from the hallway was practically pulp from the rain.

Evelyn took one look at me and locked the door.

“What happened?”

“Reagan admitted Dad is alive.”

She stared at me.

“Are you certain?”

“I heard her say it. She said they were keeping him alive until they found the original document.”

For several seconds, Evelyn didn't move. Then she covered her mouth with one hand.

“Camden,” she whispered. “You stubborn, impossible man.”

“You knew this might happen?”

“No. I suspected his death was suspicious, but I thought he had been killed before he could finish his investigation.”

She carefully unfolded the photograph I'd stolen.

The woman beside my father wore a white medical coat. Her identification badge was partly obscured, but enough remained to make out her name.

DR. LILLIAN CROSS.

Evelyn recognized it immediately.

“Lillian Cross ran Briarwood Recovery Center. The facility closed last year after a series of unexplained medical incidents.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

We turned to Vale's memory card.

The first folder contained transaction records, payment authorizations, and lists of offshore accounts. Millions of dollars had passed through companies with names that sounded legitimate but had no real employees, offices, or products.

One transaction caught my eye.

A payment of $850,000 had been made three weeks before my arrest. Its description read:

LEGAL CONTINGENCY: F.D.

My initials.

The payment had gone to a private consulting company owned by a former prosecutor's brother.

I felt sick.

“They paid to convict me.”

Evelyn enlarged the record.

“Look at the authorization number.”

It matched a reference in a second folder labeled LAZARUS.

Inside was a series of invoices for medical equipment, private security, and pharmaceutical supplies. Each payment had been authorized through a company controlled by Carter.

The latest invoice was dated three days earlier.

Its destination was an unfamiliar address in northern Pennsylvania.

At the bottom was a code.

LC-17 / PATIENT C.D. / CONTINUOUS SEDATION.

I read it twice.

“Patient C.D. Camden Dennis.”

Evelyn nodded grimly.

“LC may refer to Lillian Cross. Seventeen could be a room number.”

I took the brass key from my pocket.

“Or something else.”

I placed the key beside the memory card. Evelyn studied the number engraved on its handle.

“Your father might have used the number to identify a storage locker, but it may also be linked to whatever they were hiding.”

Before we could investigate further, a notification appeared on Evelyn's laptop.

A new email had arrived from an address that no longer existed.

There was no message, only a video attachment.

Evelyn opened it.

My father appeared on the screen, lying in a hospital bed. He looked thinner than I'd ever seen him, his face hollow and his hair almost entirely white.

A man in medical scrubs adjusted an IV beside him.

Then Reagan entered the frame.

She leaned over Dad and spoke softly enough that the microphone barely caught her words.

“Sign the transfer, Camden. You can stop all of this whenever you want.”

Dad turned his face away.

Reagan straightened.

“Fine. Let your son come searching for you. Perhaps watching him suffer will finally change your mind.”

The video ended.

I sat motionless.

My father hadn't abandoned me.

He'd been trapped.

And somewhere in the darkness, he'd been waiting for me to find him.