Chapter 3 - The Voice on the TapeHank raised his gun.
The garage door lifted six inches.
A pair of boots appeared beneath it.
Sarah stepped backward.
The door rose higher.
A man in a black coat entered.
Sarah almost fired.
Then she recognized him.
Elias Monroe.
A retired federal prosecutor who had vanished from public life fifteen years earlier.
Hank lowered his weapon.
“You took your time.”
Monroe glanced at Sarah.
“So did she.”
Sarah frowned.
“You know me?”
“I knew your father.”
Another person who knew Frank.
Another secret.
Sarah was beginning to hate the sound of her father's name.
Monroe looked at the cassette in her hand.
“You found it.”
“You knew it existed?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what it says.”
Monroe shook his head.
“Play it.”
Hank found an old cassette player.
The tape hissed.
Then a man's voice filled the garage.
Frank.
Older than Sarah remembered.
Tired.
Afraid.
“If you're hearing this, I'm already gone.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Her father's voice.
For twenty-four years she had wondered whether she remembered it correctly.
She didn't.
She had forgotten how calm it was.
Frank continued.
“Sarah, I need you to understand something. I did not leave you.”
A tear ran down Sarah's cheek.
“I was forced to disappear because the people hunting me had access to every official system.”
The tape crackled.
“Robert Vale knows about the first archive.”
Sarah opened her eyes.
“But he doesn't know about the second.”
Cutter had known.
Vale had known something existed.
Neither knew the location.
Frank continued.
“The second archive contains the names of everyone involved.”
A pause.
“Judges. Officers. Bankers. Politicians.”
Then his voice dropped.
“And the man who protected me.”
Sarah stared at Hank.
The tape continued.
“Do not trust Hank.”
Hank's face went rigid.
Sarah turned toward him.
He looked genuinely stunned.
Frank spoke again.
“He will tell you he protected me. That's partly true.”
The tape clicked.
“He also helped me disappear.”
Sarah stepped away from Hank.
“You helped him?”
Hank said nothing.
Monroe looked at him.
“You never told her.”
“I couldn't.”
Sarah's hands trembled.
The tape continued.
“When I vanished, I had two choices. Run alone, or create a person everyone would believe was dead.”
Sarah whispered:
“Dad…”
Frank said:
“If Sarah ever finds the archive, she must not look for me.”
A long silence followed.
Then the final sentence.
“Because if she's looking for me, it means they've already found her.”
The tape stopped.
Nobody moved.
Sarah slowly looked at Hank.
“You knew he was alive.”
Hank closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
“You saw him.”
“Twenty-four years ago.”
“Where?”
“Canada.”
Sarah laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe you haven't heard from him since?”
“I haven't.”
Monroe interrupted.
“We have a bigger problem.”
Sarah turned.
“What?”
Monroe placed a photograph on the table.
A recent photograph.
It showed Robert Vale entering a hospital.
Sarah stared.
The man in the picture looked healthy.
No blood.
No injury.
No gunshot wound.
“He was never shot,” Monroe said.
Sarah's stomach dropped.
“Then who died?”
Monroe looked at her.
“An actor.”
Cutter had disappeared.
Vale had staged his own assassination.
Sarah understood.
The government sedan.
The security detail.
The shooting.
All of it.
A performance.
“He wanted us to believe he was dead,” she said.
Monroe nodded.
“Because he needed to disappear without being chased.”
Hank looked at the archive.
“And find the second one.”
Sarah opened the wooden box again.
A small metal compartment had appeared beneath the lining.
She pried it open.
Inside was a key.
Not a house key.
A thin silver key engraved with one number.
17
Monroe's face turned white.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father.”
Monroe took one step backward.
“That key opens something I spent twenty years trying to destroy.”
Sarah held it tighter.
“What?”
“A vault.”
“Where?”
Monroe looked at the number.
“Chicago.”
Hank shook his head.
“No.”
Monroe glanced at him.
“Yes.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes.
“What is in the vault?”
Monroe answered:
“The proof that Robert Vale never killed Frank Mitchell.”
Sarah's heart stopped.
“Then who did?”
Monroe stared at the garage door.
Outside, an engine started.
“One man.”
“Who?”
Monroe's voice was barely audible.
May you like
“Frank himself.”
THE SECOND ARCHIVE
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