PART 5
We didn’t go home.
Sarah drove.
I sat beside her, holding both USB drives in my lap.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
Finally, I asked:
“Where are we going?”
“To the place Liam told me about.”
“What place?”
“You’ll know when we get there.”
Twenty minutes later, Sarah pulled into an old roadside motel outside the city.
The place looked abandoned.
The sign flickered above us.
I didn’t want to get out.
“Sarah, what are we doing here?”
She turned off the engine.
“Liam rented a room here.”
“When?”
“The week before he died.”
We walked inside.
Room 17.
Sarah pulled a key from her pocket.
I stared at it.
“You had this the whole time?”
She nodded.
“Liam gave it to me.”
The room was small and dusty.
There was an old table beside the window.
A chair.
A lamp.
And a locked metal box.
Sarah placed the key inside the lock.
Click.
The box opened.
Inside was a stack of papers.
A photograph.
And one final letter.
I picked up the photograph first.
It showed Liam standing beside Marcus.
But there was another person in the picture.
Daniel.
And standing beside him was someone I recognized.
I dropped the photograph.
Sarah picked it up.
Her face went white.
“What’s wrong?”
She couldn’t answer.
I took the photograph back.
The fourth person was my father.
My father had been dead for twelve years.
I stared at the photograph.
“This is impossible.”
Sarah sat down.
“Liam found it in the company archives.”
“Why was Dad there?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at the date.
The photograph had been taken fifteen years ago.
Three years before my father died.
I opened Liam’s final letter.
There were only a few lines.
Emily,
If you’ve made it this far, you now know that the company didn’t begin this operation with Marcus.
It began long before him.
Your father was one of the people who discovered it.
He tried to expose them.
They stopped him.
Liam.
I couldn’t breathe.
My father hadn’t died naturally.
At least, Liam didn’t believe he had.
I read the last line.
And Sarah knows who ordered it.
I looked up.
Sarah was crying.
“Is it true?”
She nodded.
“Who?”
She looked at me.
“It was Daniel.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“The man from the office?”
Sarah nodded.
“He was working for them.”
“Then why did Liam trust you?”
“Because I helped him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Liam made me promise.”
I stood up.
“You lied to me for weeks.”
