Chapter 3 - THE MAN WHO STOOD AT HER FATHER'S FUNERAL
Molly did scream.
Raymond’s hand clamped over her mouth.
Then a black shape slammed into them.
Dylan.
All three hit the wall.
Raymond released Molly.
She stumbled sideways as Dylan drove him into a row of metal chairs.
“Move!” Dylan shouted.
Molly ran toward the treatment-room doors.
Atlas was barking wildly inside.
Emergency lights flickered red along the hallway.
Behind her came the brutal sounds of two men struggling.
A chair crashed.
Someone cursed.
Molly found the treatment-room door locked.
“Kessler!”
“Stay back!”
Something slammed into the other side.
Molly looked through the narrow glass window.
Kessler was crouched beside Atlas’s treatment cage.
Another man stood inside.
He wore hospital scrubs.
But he wasn’t staff.
He held a syringe.
Atlas growled.
The stranger glanced toward Molly.
Then rushed the rear door.
“Kessler!”
“I’m okay.”
The veterinarian pointed toward the hallway.
“Help Dylan.”
Molly turned.
Raymond had produced a knife.
Dylan caught his wrist.
The blade stopped inches from Dylan’s throat.
Molly grabbed the nearest thing she could find.
A steel clipboard.
She struck Raymond’s arm.
Once.
Twice.
The knife fell.
Dylan drove Raymond to the floor.
Within seconds, two of Dylan’s security men burst through the clinic doors.
They restrained him.
Raymond looked up at Molly.
Not angry.
Almost disappointed.
“You should have stayed invisible.”
Molly’s chest rose and fell.
“You tried to kill Atlas.”
Raymond smiled faintly.
“Atlas was never the problem.”
“What is?”
“You.”
The words landed harder than the kick.
Dylan grabbed Raymond by the collar.
“Why?”
Raymond looked at him.
“You still don’t understand?”
“Then explain it.”
Raymond laughed.
“I always knew Patrick overestimated you.”
Molly stepped forward.
“Don’t say his name.”
Raymond looked at her.
“You have his eyes.”
“You stood beside my mother at his funeral.”
“Yes.”
“You helped carry his coffin.”
“Yes.”
“You came to our house every Christmas for seven years.”
Raymond’s smile faded.
“That was necessary.”
Molly stared.
“For what?”
“To know whether Patrick had told you anything.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
“What would he have told me?”
Raymond said nothing.
Dylan tightened his grip.
“Answer her.”
Raymond’s eyes shifted toward him.
“You think you’re the frightening person in this room?”
“No.”
Dylan lowered his voice.
“I think I’m the person deciding whether you leave it.”
For the first time, Raymond’s expression cracked.
Molly saw fear.
“Dylan,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Don’t.”
A long second passed.
Dylan released Raymond.
Security dragged him toward another room.
“Keep him alive,” Dylan ordered.
Molly stared at Dylan.
“You were going to hurt him.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t going to bring my father back.”
“No.”
“Then don’t pretend you’re doing any of this for me.”
Dylan met her gaze.
“I’m not pretending.”
Kessler opened the treatment-room door.
“Atlas is stable.”
Molly immediately went inside.
The mastiff lay on thick blankets with IV lines attached to one leg.
He looked exhausted.
But alive.
Molly crouched.
“Hey.”
Atlas’s tail tapped once.
She laughed despite herself.
“You have terrible timing.”
Dylan stood in the doorway.
Kessler examined the syringe the intruder had dropped.
“If he had injected this, Atlas would have died within minutes.”
“What is it?” Dylan asked.
“Potassium chloride.”
Molly looked at him.
Someone had come to finish the dog.
Even after Atlas reached a veterinary clinic.
“Why is he so important?” she asked.
Dylan didn’t answer.
Molly stood.
“You know something.”
“I know Atlas was with your father before he was with me.”
Everything stopped.
“What?”
Dylan walked farther into the room.
“Patrick found him.”
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
Molly looked at Atlas.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“My father never had a dog.”
“He did for three days.”
Dylan reached down and gently touched Atlas’s head.
“He found him beside an abandoned truck near Mill Creek. Atlas was probably eight months old.”
Molly searched her memory.
Her father had come home late several nights shortly before his death.
Once, she remembered mud across the cuffs of his jeans.
Her mother had asked what happened.
Patrick said he had helped someone change a tire.
“Why did you get him?”
“Patrick brought Atlas to me.”
“Why?”
“He said he needed someone he trusted to keep him safe.”
“A dog?”
“At the time, I thought it was only a dog.”
“And now?”
Dylan looked toward the hallway where Raymond had been taken.
“Now I think Patrick hid something.”
Molly stared at Atlas.
“In him?”
“On him. With him. Maybe somewhere he could lead us.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It does.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“My father dies. You take his dog. Eleven years later your fiancée kidnaps that dog and brings him to the restaurant where I work.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t coincidence.”
“No.”
Molly looked down.
Atlas’s gray muzzle rested against her knee.
“Why did he come to me?”
Dylan’s answer was immediate.
“Because he remembers you.”
She looked up.
“I told you. We never had a dog.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Dylan crouched beside Atlas.
“Patrick took one of your sweaters with him when he found Atlas.”
Molly stared.
“What?”
“He said the puppy wouldn’t sleep unless there was something that smelled like home.”
Molly remembered losing a blue school sweatshirt when she was seventeen.
Her father had blamed the washing machine.
A laugh escaped her.
Then she covered her mouth as tears came.
For eleven years, she had believed the last weeks of her father’s life were ordinary.
Now nothing was ordinary.
Dylan gave her space.
After a moment Molly whispered, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I promised Patrick I wouldn’t come near you.”
“Why?”
“Because he was afraid my world would follow.”
“It did anyway.”
Dylan had no answer.
His phone buzzed.
The security team at Blackwoods had photographed everything inside the hidden basement room.
Dylan swiped through images.
Surveillance photographs of Molly walking to work.
Molly buying groceries.
Molly visiting her mother’s grave.
Molly waiting for a bus.
Some were years old.
Then Dylan stopped.
A photograph lay on a desk.
Patrick Lane.
Raymond.
Conrad Burroughs.
The three men stood inside a warehouse.
On the back someone had written a date.
Two days before Patrick died.
And beneath it, three words.
THE LEDGER EXISTS.
Molly whispered, “What ledger?”
Dylan looked at her.
“My father kept records.”
“Of crimes?”
“Transactions. Payments. Judges. Police. Businesses. Politicians.”
“And Patrick had them?”
“I thought they were destroyed.”
Molly looked toward Raymond’s room.
“Apparently not.”
Dylan zoomed in on another photograph.
It showed Patrick standing alone beside Atlas.
Around Atlas’s neck was a thick brown leather collar.
Molly stared.
“That isn’t the collar he was wearing before he disappeared?”
“No.”
“What happened to it?”
“I replaced it years ago.”
“Why?”
“It cracked.”
“Where is it?”
Dylan’s gaze sharpened.
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“I have a box at home with Atlas’s old things.”
Molly stood.
“We need it.”
Dylan nodded.
His estate was twenty minutes outside Harrow Falls.
Kessler insisted Atlas remain hospitalized, under armed guard.
Molly almost refused to leave him.
Atlas whined as she stepped toward the door.
Dylan looked at the dog.
“He hasn’t done that for anyone in years.”
“What?”
“Asked them to stay.”
Molly touched Atlas’s forehead.
“I’ll come back.”
The mastiff settled.
An hour later, Molly stood inside a house larger than the apartment building where she lived.
Dylan ignored everything expensive around him.
He took her to a private study.
One wall was lined with locked cabinets.
He opened a lower one.
Inside sat a weathered storage box.
Atlas.
Photographs.
Veterinary records.
An old leash.
A cracked leather collar.
Molly’s hands began trembling.
Dylan lifted it carefully.
“This?”
She nodded.
Something had been carved into the underside.
Dylan turned it toward the light.
Two letters.
P.L.
Patrick Lane.
Molly traced them with one finger.
“My father did this.”
Dylan watched her.
“There’s something inside.”
“What?”
“The leather feels thicker here.”
Dylan took a small knife from the desk and cut one old seam.
A thin brass object slid out.
A key.
Molly stared.
Dylan held it in his palm.
A number had been stamped into the metal.
Molly’s breath caught.
“What?”
She took the key.
“I know that number.”
“From where?”
“My father used to take me to Union Station every Saturday when I was little.”
Dylan waited.
“He always rented the same locker.”
“Number 317?”
Molly nodded.
The old Union Station had been closed for fifteen years.
Most of it had been converted into offices and private storage.
Dylan was already reaching for his phone when Molly saw something else inside the collar seam.
Paper.
Tiny.
Folded tightly.
She pulled it free.
The paper was yellow with age.
Patrick’s handwriting covered one side.
Only one sentence.
Molly read it aloud.
“If Atlas comes back to my little girl, it means I failed.”
Her voice broke.
Dylan took one step closer.
Below that sentence was another.
She forced herself to continue.
“Trust no Burroughs until he gives you the answer to this question.”
Molly looked at Dylan.
“What question?”
She unfolded the rest.
Patrick had written six words.
WHAT DID YOU LEAVE AT THE RIVER?
Dylan went pale.
Molly had never seen him afraid.
“What?”
He stared at Patrick’s message.
“What did you leave at the river?” she repeated.
Dylan sat down.
For a moment, he looked nothing like a man people feared.
He looked twenty-three again.
Guilty.
Ashamed.
“I know the answer.”
Molly waited.
Dylan looked at her.
“A gun.”
She said nothing.
“I ordered a man beaten at Mill Creek. Patrick stopped it before things went further.”
“And the gun?”
“I threw it into the river afterward.”
“Why?”
“Because Patrick told me that if I wanted to be better than my father, I had to start by deciding which part of myself I was willing to drown.”
Molly’s eyes filled.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know how.”
“And?”
“He said, ‘Then start with the gun.’”
Molly looked at the note again.
Patrick’s test.
A secret only he and Dylan would know.
Dylan answered it correctly.
For the first time, Molly believed one thing he had told her.
Before she could speak, the security alarm screamed.
A window exploded.
Dylan pulled Molly to the floor.
Gunfire shattered the study.
The old collar fell from her hands.
May you like
And outside, someone shouted the order that proved they had not come for Dylan.
“Take the girl alive!”
