Chapter 6
We left for Tucson before sunrise.
Cross had escaped.
That meant Jacob was in danger.
Every mile felt too slow.
Sarah sat beside me in Cole’s truck.
Neither of us spoke for almost an hour.
Finally she said, “His name was supposed to be Nathan.”
I turned.
“What?”
“Our son.”
Her eyes remained on the road.
“When I was pregnant, I chose Nathan.”
My chest tightened.
“You knew before the warehouse?”
She nodded.
“I was going to tell you that night.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
All those years.
“So Jacob isn’t his real name.”
“No.”
“Who raised him?”
“I don’t know.”
The file showed that Michael Reeves, the firefighter who rescued Sarah, later became Jacob’s legal father.
That confused everything.
“Michael took you out of the warehouse.”
“Yes.”
“Then somehow he ended up with our son.”
Sarah wiped her eyes.
“Cross found us months later.”
She told me what happened.
Michael had hidden Sarah in Flagstaff.
She gave birth there.
Three months later men broke into the house.
Michael fought them.
Sarah was taken.
When she woke, the baby was gone.
Cross told her Michael had betrayed her.
Years later Sarah learned Michael had survived.
But she never found the child.
“Maybe Michael saved him,” I said.
“I hope so.”
Jacob lived in a small apartment near a Tucson medical-training center.
When we arrived, the door was open.
My heart stopped.
I entered first.
“Jacob?”
No answer.
The apartment had been searched.
Drawers overturned.
A chair broken.
Sarah covered her mouth.
“No.”
Cole checked the bedroom.
“Empty.”
I saw blood near the kitchen.
Not much.
Still enough.
Then movement came from behind us.
I turned.
A young man stood in the doorway holding a baseball bat.
The photograph hadn’t prepared me.
Gray eyes.
My jaw.
Sarah’s expression.
He stared at us.
“Who are you?”
Sarah whispered, “Nathan.”
The bat lowered slightly.
“What?”
She began crying.
“My name is Sarah Mitchell.”
His face changed.
I saw recognition.
“You.”
Sarah stopped.
“You know me?”
“My dad had a picture.”
Michael.
Jacob looked at me.
Then at Cole.
Then back to Sarah.
“My father told me you died.”
Sarah’s knees almost failed.
“Michael raised you?”
“Yes.”
Relief destroyed her.
She sobbed into both hands.
Jacob looked frightened.
“What is happening?”
I stepped forward.
“My name is Ray Mercer.”
His eyes moved to my vest.
Then my face.
He studied me too long.
“You’re him.”
Now it was my turn to freeze.
“What?”
“My dad had pictures of you too.”
Sarah cried harder.
Jacob lowered the bat completely.
“He said if a man named Ray Mercer ever found me, I should listen before running.”
A laugh and a sob escaped me together.
“Michael knew.”
Jacob nodded.
“He told me part of it last year before he died.”
My chest tightened.
“I’m sorry.”
“Cancer.”
Jacob swallowed.
“He said my biological parents didn’t abandon me.”
Sarah stepped closer.
“We didn’t.”
“I know.”
He looked at her.
“At least, I wanted to believe him.”
Sarah reached toward him.
Then stopped before touching.
“May I?”
Jacob stared at her hand.
Then nodded.
She touched his cheek.
Her whole body shook.
“My baby.”
Jacob’s eyes filled.
Then he hugged her.
Sarah collapsed against him.
I looked away because the moment belonged to them.
But Jacob reached one arm toward me.
I froze.
He nodded.
That was all.
I joined them.
For twenty years I had never held my son.
Now I held him as a grown man.
Nothing could return what we lost.
But something inside me finally stopped bleeding.
Then Jacob whispered, “Someone came here last night.”
We pulled apart.
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
He pointed toward the kitchen blood.
“That’s his.”
My eyebrows rose.
Jacob almost smiled.
“He expected an easy target.”
Cole laughed once.
“Definitely Ray’s kid.”
Sarah gave him a look.
Jacob continued.
“The man asked for a file my dad left me.”
“What file?”
Jacob walked to a vent and removed a metal box.
Inside were Michael’s papers.
Photographs.
Letters.
A flash drive.
And an old police badge.
Ruiz examined it.
“Michael Reeves wasn’t just a firefighter.”
The badge identified him as a federal investigator assigned to an organized-crime task force.
Sarah stared.
“He never told me.”
Jacob handed me a letter.
It was addressed:
TO RAY AND SARAH, IF YOU EVER FIND HIM.
My hands shook.
I opened it.
Michael explained everything.
He had rescued Sarah from the warehouse while working undercover.
When Cross later attacked their safe house, Michael escaped with the baby.
He believed Sarah had been killed.
To save the child, he created a protected identity.
Jacob Reeves.
He spent the next twenty years raising him.
The final paragraph broke me.
Ray, I never knew if you survived or whether Sarah ever learned the truth. I hope someday Jacob finds you both. He is brave, stubborn, compassionate, and occasionally impossible. I suspect those traits came from you.
I laughed through tears.
Jacob watched me.
“He wrote that?”
“Apparently.”
Sarah smiled for the first time.
Then Ruiz plugged in Michael’s flash drive.
One video appeared.
Michael sat in front of a camera.
Older.
Sick.
“If you’re watching this, Cross is still free.”
His expression hardened.
“I kept one piece of evidence Sarah never knew existed.”
He held up a ledger.
“The original Meridian master book.”
Sarah gasped.
Michael continued.
“It contains every payment Adrian Cross made.”
Ruiz leaned forward.
“Where is it?”
Michael answered from the video.
“Not in this box.”
Cole groaned.
The video continued.
“I gave it to the one person Cross would never suspect.”
A photograph appeared.
Victor Hale.
My blood went cold.
Sarah stared at the screen.
“No.”
Michael said, “Victor came to me twelve years ago.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“He confessed what he had done.”
Sarah covered her mouth.
“He helped me protect Jacob from that day forward.”
I thought of Victor carrying the second key for fourteen years.
His guilt.
His silence.
Michael finished.
“Victor has the ledger.”
My phone rang.
Boone.
I answered immediately.
His voice was frantic.
“Ray, the clubhouse was hit.”
I stood.
“Emily?”
“She’s safe.”
My lungs worked again.
“Victor?”
Silence.
“Boone?”
“They took him.”
My eyes closed.
“Cross?”
“We think so.”
Then Boone said the words I feared.
“They left a message.”
“What message?”
“Bring Sarah and Jacob.”
Sarah went pale.
May you like
Boone’s voice dropped.
“Or Victor dies at sunrise.”
