Chapter 12 - THE SECOND TAPE
Thomas had hidden the second recording inside my grandfather’s old lake house.
The property had been empty for years.
By dawn, police were searching it.
I went anyway.
This time nobody argued.
Maybe everyone was tired.
Maybe they had finally learned I was going to show up whether invited or not.
The lake was gray beneath the morning sky.
Thomas’s car sat outside.
The front door was open.
Inside, furniture had been overturned.
Blood marked the kitchen floor.
My mother stopped breathing.
“Tom?”
No answer.
Ethan found the recorder beneath a broken chair.
The tape inside was labeled:
DIANE - JULY 1990.
“That’s before I was born.”
Diane nodded.
Thomas appeared in the hallway.
Blood ran from his forehead.
My mother screamed.
He raised both hands.
“I’m okay.”
“Who did this?”
“Peter.”
“Peter’s in custody.”
Thomas looked at us.
“No, he isn’t.”
Ethan immediately called the agents.
A transport officer had been assaulted.
Peter had escaped twenty minutes earlier.
Thomas sat down.
“He came for the tape.”
“Why?”
“Because Richard isn’t Sarah’s father.”
My heart hammered.
“Then you are?”
Thomas looked at Diane.
She nodded once.
He pressed play.
My grandfather’s voice filled the room.
Then Richard’s.
He was shouting.
“You think that baby makes you a family?”
Thomas answered.
“She is my family.”
Then my mother’s voice.
Young.
Terrified.
“Richard, put the gun down.”
A gunshot exploded on the recording.
I jumped.
Thomas stopped the tape.
“That was the night Richard tried to kill me.”
My mother whispered, “Sarah was already four months along.”
Thomas looked at me.
“I am your father.”
I stared at him.
Thirty-five years of my life rearranged themselves in one sentence.
Then Ethan’s phone rang.
Federal agents.
Peter had not escaped alone.
Someone had helped him.
A woman.
May you like
Security footage showed her face.
Rachel.
