PART 3
I turned the photograph over again.
“Who never made it home?”
Mom looked at the three faces beside Thomas.
“I don’t know.”
“You said this was why you kept everything.”
“Because Thomas disappeared from my life after this photograph was taken.”
“He didn’t disappear. Hayes made sure you couldn’t find him.”
Mom shook her head.
“No. Something happened after that.”
My phone rang.
Thomas.
I answered.
“Admiral?”
“Are you with Margaret?”
“Yes.”
A long silence followed.
“Then listen carefully. Don’t open the second folder.”
I looked at the folder in my hand.
Too late.
“Why?”
“Because Hayes wasn’t working alone.”
Mom closed her eyes.
Thomas continued.
“I’ve spent twenty-nine years trying to find out who altered the records connected to that procurement investigation.”
“Did you find them?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Another pause.
Then his voice became quieter.
“The name is in the folder.”
I looked down.
There was a thin document beneath the photograph.
I pulled it free.
At the top was a list of officers assigned to the investigation.
Thomas Callahan.
Richard Hayes.
And a third name.
Daniel Sullivan.
My breath stopped.
I looked at Mom.
She had already started crying.
“Who is Daniel Sullivan?”
She whispered:
“Your grandfather.”
I stared at the page.
My grandfather had died when I was four.
I’d spent my entire childhood believing he had been a retired Navy mechanic.
But the document described him as a senior logistics officer.
And beside his name was a handwritten note:
Transferred after refusing to approve the shipment.
I looked at Thomas through the phone.
“What was being shipped?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, he said:
“A system worth millions of dollars.”
“Was it stolen?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
His voice dropped.
“It was deliberately misreported as destroyed.”
Mom covered her mouth.
I turned the page.
There was another handwritten note.
This one was dated twenty-nine years ago.
Hayes knows about the child.
My hands went cold.
Thomas went silent on the phone.
“Admiral?”
“I need you to leave your mother’s house.”
“Why?”
“Because if that file is real, someone has been watching Margaret for nearly thirty years.”
I looked toward the front window.
A dark sedan was parked across the street.
Its engine was running.
I hadn’t noticed it when I arrived.
Mom saw it too.
“Wren…”
The car’s headlights suddenly came on.
Then my phone received one final message from the unknown number:
You finally found the file. Now find out why your grandfather died.
I looked at Thomas.
Then at my mother.
And suddenly the tattoo on his wrist no longer felt like the beginning of the mystery.
It felt like the warning.