Ben entered with cold air at his back.
He wore a dark overcoat and kept looking through the windows toward the highway.
His face had lost all color.
“You followed me,” I said.
“I was ordered to.”
My hand moved toward the flash drive.
Ben raised both palms.
“I parked two houses down.
Your father told me to watch the driveway and recover anything Mark might have passed to you.”
“The headlights.”
“That was me warning you.”
“You could have called sooner.”
“Colonel Hensley had people monitoring the normal lines.
I needed you away from the house before I used the emergency phone.”
Even now, Ben called him Colonel.
“What did you know about the explosion?”
“Not enough.” Shame moved across his face.
“I saw a case in the study and heard him mention a timer.
He told me it was a document-destruction system.
I believed him until I saw Mark’s face.”
Ben placed a thick envelope on the desk.
Inside were copied pages from my father’s handwritten log.
One entry listed the birthday dinner, the location of each guest, the safest angle for a contained blast, and the time the fire department would likely need to reach the house.
My mother was described as M.H.
I was E.M.
My son was listed only as child.
My father had reduced us to positions on a page.
The last page contained two instructions for Ben.
Observe daughter.
Recover device.
“You took these from his desk?” I asked.
“After you left.
He went to the rear hall to arm the charge.
I photographed the pages and ran.”
“Is my mother alive?”
“Yes.
The blast knocked out the study and part of the garage.
The dining room windows shattered, but everyone got out.”
Relief weakened my knees so suddenly that I had to grip the desk.
Ben continued.
“Your father left through the side entrance seconds before the explosion.
He had a vehicle waiting beyond the back fence.”
“He planned to look like a victim.”
“He planned to disappear long enough for Mark to be blamed.”
The progress bar reached forty-eight percent.
Ben glanced at the screen.
“What happens when that finishes?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to leave.”
“No.
Every time I run, he gets to decide where I go next.”
Headlights swept across the gas station windows.
A dark sedan turned from Route 29 and stopped beside the pumps.
My father stepped out.
He still wore his dinner suit.
One cuff was gray with ash, and a narrow cut crossed his temple.
