Chapter 7 - The Photograph with Two Faces
I didn't scream. For one terrible second, I couldn't even move.
The man across the parking garage stood beside the silver SUV, holding his phone at eye level. A pale mark crossed his temple toward his ear. From where I stood, it was an exact match for the scar on my father's face.
Then he lowered the phone, and I saw he was younger.
“Luca,” I whispered. “Look at him.”
Luca had already seen. He stepped in front of me while Marco spoke into his radio. The stranger didn't run. He lifted two fingers in a casual salute, climbed into the SUV, and drove toward the exit.
“Don't chase him,” I said quickly.
Luca looked surprised. “Why?”
“Because he wanted us to.”
Marco's team tracked the vehicle on external cameras but did not follow into the street. The plate belonged to a rental company. The driver had entered using a stolen employee pass. Everything about his appearance felt arranged, right down to the scar.
Vanessa leaned against a concrete column. “He told me you would think I was lying.”
“Who did?” Luca asked.
“My father.”
“You've had a lot of chances to tell us the truth,” I said. “Start now.”
She closed her eyes. “I was supposed to marry Luca and keep him close to Enzo's business. That's what my father wanted. At first I told myself it was normal. Families like ours make alliances. Then he asked me to put the device under the chair. He said it would record Luca agreeing to the revised freight contracts.”
“And you believed that?”
“I wanted to.”
She looked at Luca. “I thought if I did what he asked, he'd stop threatening my younger sister.”
I had never heard of Vanessa having a sister. She explained that seventeen-year-old Olivia had been living in Switzerland with their aunt. Enzo had threatened to bring her home if Vanessa refused the engagement.
“Where is Olivia now?” I asked.
Vanessa's mouth trembled. “She disappeared yesterday.”
The answer didn't absolve Vanessa. It changed the shape of the danger. A woman could be cruel and frightened at the same time. I had been one of her targets; I wasn't prepared to become her friend. But I understood what it meant to have family used against you.
We took Vanessa to a law office where she agreed to make a recorded statement in the presence of independent counsel. Luca insisted she contact Olivia's guardian through official channels rather than through Enzo. I watched him give instructions, his anger controlled enough to be useful.
Then I called my mother.
She answered on the second ring. “Grace? Is your father all right?”
“He's alive,” I said, hearing how impossible the words still sounded. “He's resting.”
There was a long silence.
“I know,” she finally whispered. “I saw him last night.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “You saw him?”
“He came to the safe house after the doctor cleared him. We talked.”
“About what?”
“About everything we couldn't say when you were little.”
I wanted to be angry that they had met without me. Instead I realized they had their own grief to sort through. Their marriage had been interrupted by fear, and I didn't own every piece of it.
“Mom,” I said, “did Dad ever have a twin?”
She gave a startled laugh. “No. Why?”
“Someone's copying his scar.”
My mother stopped laughing. “Your father didn't get that scar in the warehouse fire.”
“Then where?”
“He had it when we met. He told me he got it in a boating accident at seventeen.”
I looked toward the office door. “I need to go.”
I found Luca in a conference room studying the hospital record. When I told him what my mother said, he placed two photographs side by side on the table: one of Thomas Parker from an old company badge, and one of the man in the parking garage.
“Similar scar,” he said. “Different placement. His ends at the eyebrow. Your father's reaches the ear.”
“Someone wanted me to panic.”
“Or wanted your father to think a particular person was alive.”
The name Vincent hung between us.
We visited my father that afternoon with the photographs. Thomas studied the image of the stranger for a long time. His injured shoulder was stiff, and he wore a borrowed sweater that made him look like a retired teacher rather than a fugitive witness.
“Do you recognize him?” I asked.
“No.”
“You're sure?”
“I'm sure I don't recognize his face. But that scar—” He stopped.
“What about it?”
“Vincent once asked me how I got mine. He said scars made men memorable. He said a memorable man could be useful if you needed a witness to remember the wrong person.”
Luca leaned forward. “When did he say that?”
“Two weeks before the warehouse burned.”
We sat in silence. It was the first clue that suggested the scar was not a coincidence, but a deliberate signature. Someone had borrowed the image of my father to unsettle us.
Later, Marco brought news from the bank. The access to Vincent's account had originated from a private office leased by the Bellini Foundation. But the account itself was nearly empty. The only transaction was a one-dollar transfer to a nonprofit called Second Harbor, with a reference number made of eight digits.
I copied the number onto a legal pad. “Why send a dollar?”
“A signal,” Luca said. “Or a way to activate a record.”
I looked at the digits again. 04171998.
April seventeenth, 1998.
My birthday.
I felt my skin go cold. “That's not a random reference.”
Luca looked at me. “What is it?”
“The day I was born.”
He stared at the page. “Then this wasn't a message for me.”
I wanted to tear the paper in half. Instead I forced myself to ask what the sender expected me to do with it. My father had hidden access information where I would know to look. A date could be a password, but a password to what?
That evening I went through the belongings rescued from my mother's house. A cardboard box held old report cards, photographs, a childhood diary, and the music box my father had given me when I turned twelve. The little ballerina inside had long since lost an arm. I wound the key anyway. The tune played unevenly, then stopped.
I turned it over. Beneath the felt lining was a thin metal plate secured by two screws. I had never noticed it before. Marco found a small screwdriver, and I lifted the plate.
Inside was a folded strip of paper containing a web address and a second string of numbers. There was also a photograph of my father standing beside a woman with dark hair and a serious face.
On the back he had written: EVELYN KNOWS THE WAY OUT.
Luca recognized the woman immediately. “Evelyn Shaw.”
I held the photograph closer. Evelyn's left hand rested on my father's shoulder. On her right hand was a silver ring with a blue stone.
I had seen that ring before.
Not on Evelyn.
May you like
On the woman who had served as Vanessa's event planner at the engagement dinner.
Her name was Celia Grant, and she had been standing three feet from the chair when I pulled it away.
