She nodded.
“Miguel knew everything.”
Caleb waited.
“He investigated the key.”
“How?”
“He worked maintenance for a private storage company.”
Caleb felt sick.
“What did he find?”
“A deposit box.”
“Containing?”
Sofia began crying harder.
“Records. Photographs. Bank documents. Names. And one letter.”
“To who?”
“You.”
Caleb stopped breathing.
“What?”
“A letter from Darren to you.”
“Where is it?”
“I burned it.”
His eyes widened.
“Why?”
“Because it said you had to keep the truth buried if you ever got out.”
“What truth?”
Sofia looked at him.
“The warehouse robbery wasn’t Darren’s operation.”
Caleb stared.
“Of course it was.”
“No.”
“I was there.”
“You were there because he told you to be there.”
“Sofia—”
“Darren wrote that someone else planned it. Someone powerful. Someone who paid him to use the Ravens as cover.”
Caleb felt the room tilt.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You read the letter.”
“He used initials.”
“What initials?”
Sofia whispered, “V.M.”
Caleb’s face changed.
Sofia saw it.
“You know who that is.”
Caleb stepped backward.
“No.”
“Who?”
“No.”
“Caleb.”
He looked toward the wall.
“Victor Mercer.”
Sofia blinked.
“Mercer?”
Caleb’s voice became hollow.
“My father.”
Victor Mercer had been dead for thirteen years.
At least officially.
He had been a decorated police captain.
A civic leader.
A man who publicly condemned his sons’ involvement with the Iron Ravens while privately using Caleb and Darren’s criminal connections whenever it benefited him.
Caleb had hated him.
Darren worshipped him.
Victor died of a heart attack while Caleb was still incarcerated.
Thousands attended the funeral.
Caleb had not been allowed to go.
Caleb whispered, “Why would Darren accuse our father?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does this have to do with Eli?”
Sofia looked at him with unbearable sadness.
“Miguel kept investigating.”
“And?”
“Six years ago, his car went off a bridge.”
Caleb’s eyes closed.
“You said accident.”
“I wanted it to be.”
“You think he was killed?”
“I know he was.”
“How?”
“Because three days before he died, Miguel told me he had found Victor Mercer.”
Caleb opened his eyes.
“My father was already dead.”
“That’s what I said.”
Sofia reached beneath the mattress and pulled out a plastic folder.
Inside was a photograph.
Blurry.
Taken from a distance.
An older man entering a medical clinic.
The angle was poor.
The hair was white.
But Caleb knew the posture.
The shoulders.
The way the man’s left hand remained slightly curled from an old boxing injury.
“No.”
Sofia whispered, “Miguel took that picture seven years after your father supposedly died.”
Caleb sat down.
The dead did not return.
But liars did.
And Victor Mercer had lied better than any man Caleb had ever known.
“Where is this clinic?”
“Canada.”
“Why would he fake his death?”
“I think those records explain it.”
Caleb looked at the folder.
“Where are they?”
Sofia shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“Miguel moved them before he died.”
“Where?”
“He never told me.”
“Then why would anyone take Eli?”
Sofia looked toward the bedroom door.
“Because Miguel told Eli.”
Caleb stared.
“Told him what?”
“A hiding place.”
“When?”
“Before the crash. Eli was five. Miguel made it into a game.”
Caleb stood sharply.
“What game?”
Sofia’s voice shook.
“He gave Eli a phrase to remember.”
“What phrase?”
“Where broken wings learn to fly.”
Caleb’s heart stopped.
Sofia saw his face.
