Walter took her hand.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
She looked at Thomas. “Thank you for coming back.”
Thomas shook his head. “I wish I had come sooner.”
“You came when you could.”
The woman touched his arm and walked away.
• • •
That evening, Thomas and Walter returned to the garage. The Mustang stood in the center, polished and ready. Walter had hung the old blue ribbon on the mirror again. The brass compass had been cleaned, though its needle still trembled when the garage door opened.
Thomas set the hearing transcript on the workbench.
“Do you think it will change anything?” he asked.
Walter considered the question.
“Not everything.”
“Then what?”
“Maybe one family won't have to wonder. Maybe one person who knows something will decide to speak. Maybe a boy who sees a dangerous repair won't be told to mind his business.”
Thomas looked at the car.
“I used to think the list was the important thing.”
“It helped.”
“But the names were people. I forgot that sometimes.”
Walter smiled. “You were young.”
“I wasn't that young.”
“You were young enough to believe you could carry the whole thing by yourself.”
Thomas sat on the stool beside him.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I should have trusted you.”
“Yes.”
“I can't give you those years back.”
Walter placed a hand over his son's.
“No,” he said. “But you can be here for the ones we have.”
They sat quietly until the light outside the garage faded.
• • •
The next morning, Eli received a call from Daniel Cho.
“We found another entry in Shaw's financial records,” Cho said. “A payment to a company called Bellweather Recovery.”
“What's that?”
“Private asset recovery. They specialize in locating property and people for clients who don't want to use ordinary channels.”
“Are they connected to Vale?”
“On paper, no. But the company was formed by a former security contractor who worked for Shaw.”
Eli looked across the station at Naomi.
“What are they recovering?”
“That's what we're trying to find out.”
“Does it involve Thomas?”
“Maybe. The payment was made six months ago.”
Eli felt the familiar tightening in his chest.
“Six months ago, Thomas was still in Maine.”
“Exactly.”
“Could they have known where he was?”
“Possibly.”
Cho paused.
“And there's another detail. Bellweather Recovery has been paid to locate a second person. Someone named Ruth Bell.”
Eli frowned. “Thomas's mother is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then who are they looking for?”
“Someone using her name.”
• • •
The name appeared on a hotel registration in Vermont. A woman had checked in as Ruth Bell two weeks earlier, paid in cash, and left before sunrise. The security footage showed a figure in a dark coat carrying a small leather case.
Thomas studied the still image.
“That's not my mother.”
“Obviously,” Eli said.
“No. I mean the way she walks. I've seen that before.”
“Where?”
Thomas enlarged the image. The woman's left shoulder sat slightly higher than the right. She carried the case close to her body.
Then he remembered.
“Miriam,” he whispered.
Mara, standing beside him, went pale.
“My sister?”
Thomas nodded slowly. “I saw her at the payroll office once. She had a shoulder injury. She carried everything on her right side.”
“But Miriam died,” Mara said.
“The accident report says she died.”
Cho looked at the screen. “If that is Miriam, then someone has been using her identity for twenty years.”
Mara gripped the edge of the table.
“She's alive?”
“We don't know,” Cho said. “But we're going to find out.”
• • •
The hotel had retained a copy of the registration card. The signature was shaky, but the address was not. It led to a rural post-office box in a town near the Canadian border. The box had been rented under the name Ruth Bell and paid six months in advance.
Inside the box, agents found a single key and a folded map.
The key opened a storage unit.
The unit contained a suitcase, a stack of old newspapers, several photographs, and a small tape recorder. The photographs showed Miriam Voss at different ages, always at a distance. In one, she stood outside a grocery store in Vermont. In another, she was sitting on a park bench beside a lake.
The newest photograph had been taken three weeks earlier.
Miriam looked older, thinner, and frightened.
On the back, someone had written:
SHE KNOWS WHO ORDERED IT.
Mara sat down when she saw the picture.
“That's my sister,” she said.
Cho placed the photograph on the table.
“Then we find her.”
• • •
The tape recorder contained a message.