Chapter 5 - Diane's ConfessionThe woman who watched me suffer finally told the truth
The darkness lasted eleven seconds.
It felt like eleven years.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Diane was gone.
The front door was locked from the inside.
No windows were open.
No footprints crossed the hallway.
But she had been there.
Or someone wanted us to believe she had.
Dad stood in the center of the living room.
“Check every room.”
The agents searched.
Nothing.
Then someone found a recording device hidden under the kitchen table.
It started automatically.
Diane's voice filled the room.
“I don't know how long I have left.”
I gripped Dad's arm.
Her voice trembled.
“Frank, if you're hearing this, then Robert has already realized you know.”
Dad stared at the device.
“I lied to you twenty-five years ago.”
Pause.
“I wasn't just your informant.”
Another pause.
“I was Leonard Hale's wife.”
My mouth opened.
Dad's expression didn't change.
Diane continued.
“Robert is not Leonard's son.”
I felt the room tilt.
“He is Gabriel Voss's son.”
Silence.
Then:
“Frank, I know what you're going to do. You will want to protect Elena. You will want to arrest Robert. Don't.”
Dad's eyes narrowed.
“Not yet.”
Diane's voice cracked.
“Because Robert isn't making the decisions.”
The recording ended.
I looked at Dad.
“Who is?”
He didn't answer.
We replayed it.
At the end, just before the recording stopped, there was another sound.
A door opening.
Then a man's voice.
Very faint.
“You promised.”
The recording cut.
Dad immediately recognized it.
“Voss.”
I stared at him.
“He's alive.”
“Yes.”
“Then why hasn't anyone arrested him?”
“Because he's been hiding behind other people for twenty years.”
I thought of Robert.
“Including my husband.”
Dad nodded.
That night, we discovered something else.
The passports from the basement weren't Robert's.
They belonged to three women.
All with different names.
All missing from the same county.
All photographed at the same warehouse.
One of the women was the mother of a missing child.
Maya.
The child in the drawing.
Marianne found the connection.
Maya's mother had once worked for Hale Security.
She had disappeared after attempting to report suspicious shipments.
Her daughter disappeared two days later.
I looked at the child's drawing again.
The woman.
The little girl.
The black car.
And then I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
At the bottom corner was a tiny number.
Dad took the paper from my hand.
His eyes widened.
“What?”
“Locker seventeen.”
“What is it?”
“An old evidence locker.”
“Where?”
“Federal storage.”
He was already reaching for his coat.
I followed.
We drove through the city in silence.
At the storage facility, Marianne opened an archived locker.
Number seventeen.
Inside was a cardboard box.
On top was my father's handwriting.
PROJECT SULLIVAN.
Dad looked at me.
“This was supposed to stay buried.”
He opened it.
Inside were surveillance photos.
Court documents.
A list of names.
And a photograph of me.
At age eighteen.
Standing outside my college.
My stomach twisted.
“Dad.”
He looked devastated.
“I never knew they were watching you.”
“Who took this?”
He turned the photograph over.
There was a date.
And one sentence.
TARGET APPROVED.
My father's face went white.
Because the person who had signed the order wasn't Gabriel Voss.
It wasn't Leonard Hale.
It wasn't Robert.
It was someone whose name I had trusted my entire life.
Frank slowly whispered:
“No.”
May you like
I looked at the signature.
It was his own.
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