Chapter 6 - The Face in the Booth
The center's director met us in a windowless conference room. He was pale before we sat down. That told me more than anything he said.
"We got your legal demand," he said.
"Then you understand the urgency," Diane replied.
He slid a printed record across the table. "At 3:14 yesterday, an individual requested renewal of a secure corporate identity certificate under the name Walter Thomas Vance."
"Show me the image," I said.
"There are complications."
"Show me."
He turned the laptop around. The image loaded, and my first thought was that someone had scanned an old photo of my dad.
My second thought was that the photo was moving.
Surveillance footage. An old man standing inside a verification booth. White hair. Squared shoulders. The narrow face. The deep-set eyes. The same sharp line of the nose.
He turned toward the camera.
My cup slipped out of my hand. Diane caught it before it hit the floor.
I had seen that face in a thousand photographs. Across the breakfast table. At my law school graduation. Beside my hospital bed. In a coffin.
"That's not possible," I said.
"The biometric comparison came back at ninety-seven percent," the director said miserably.
"Where did he go?"
"We don't track clients after they leave."
"Cameras. Parking records. Now."
"I can't without—"
Diane set a court order on the table. "You can."
Twenty minutes later we had a license plate. Twelve minutes after that, Diane's investigator had an address. The car was registered to a shell company. The shell company owned a townhouse on Rittenhouse Square.
I knew the building. My father had owned it once — and sold it, I'd been told, two years before he died.
The townhouse sat behind black iron. No name on the buzzer. No doorman. No sign of anyone.
"Police?" Diane asked from across the street.
"Not yet. If that man is pretending to be my father, I want to know why before Adrian does."
"And if he actually is your father?"
"Then I want to know why before I kill him."
"That was almost a joke."
"It wasn't."
We crossed the street. The front door opened before we reached it, and a woman stepped out in a cream coat and dark glasses.
I stopped.
Renata Voss looked up, saw me — and froze. Three full seconds. Then she spun and ran.
"Seriously?" Diane muttered.
I kicked off my heels. Some instincts don't leave you. I caught her before the corner, twisted her wrist behind her back, and shoved her against a parked car.
"Where is he?"
"Get off me!"
"Who is Micah?"
Her whole body went still. That was the right question.
"Answer me."
She turned her head. Up close, the polish was gone. She looked terrified — not of me. Of the house behind us.
"You need to leave," she whispered.
"Who is Micah? And how do you know my name?"
Her eyes filled with something that looked, horribly, like pity. "Because this was always about you."
"What was?"
She let out one broken laugh. "You really don't know. Adrian was never supposed to marry you."
The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
"He was supposed to get close to you. Learn the company. Learn the trust. Find the way in."
"Who sent him?" My voice came out thin. "Who sent my husband?"
May you like
The townhouse door opened.
All three of us looked up.
