Timelines. Locations. His movements. Mine. Text messages stripped of meaning until you know how to read between the lines. Phone records that look harmless unless you understand what was being hidden.
Then there are the photos.
My jaw tightens.
Liam. Me. Captured separately, in moments that feel cruel in hindsight, mundane, unguarded, unaware of how close we were to the edge. Proof frozen in time, waiting to be used.
I stare at them longer than I should, the past pressing in, heavy and unrelenting.
I study the photos more closely, letting my eyes linger where they don’t want to.
That’s when it hits me.
The images ofmeare from a different date.
Every photo is time-stamped. Precise. Unforgiving. The pictures of me were taken the day before. The ones of Liam are all from the day he died.
My jaw tightens.
It still doesn’t make sense. Not yet. The pieces refuse to align, like they’re deliberately resisting the truth.
I keep going anyway.
I have to.
There’s a job order buried among the papers, routine on the surface. Target details. Locations. Timelines. Clean. Professional. The kind of assignment that shouldn’t have mattered.
So why did it?
Why was this so important to him that someone had to die for it?
The hope I walked into this with starts to thin, stretched almost transparent, but I don’t stop. I sip my whisky slowly, the burn grounding me as I comb through every page, every line, every omission.
And then I see it.
Hospital records.
My breath stills.
Liam was pronounced dead at the scene. I know that. I was there. There shouldn’t be anything beyond that, no admissions, no follow-ups, no paperwork.
But it’s all here.
Records of him being brought in. Time stamps that don’t belong. Notes that shouldn’t exist.
There’s nothing else. No other medical history. Just this.
Just Liam.
A slow, gnawing suspicion settles low in my gut.
Something about this is wrong. Not missing,wrong. The kind of wrong you feel before you can prove it, when instinct starts whispering louder than reason.
I go through everything again, more carefully this time. Page by page. Photo by photo. Searching for the detail I overlooked the first time. When I reach the photographs again, I slow, studying them with fresh eyes, trying to understand what made them worth preserving.
I turn them over.
My father’s handwriting stares back at me.
