“And you’re telling me this footage exists and is accessible?”
“It exists. At least, they tell me it does. But I have no idea where it could be. In the Lye, maybe? But I doubt Freddy was stupid enough to leave it lying around.”
My heart skips, and a memory floats through, of me in Art’s office, searching for answers, and holding a black hard drive in my hands withBackupon a sticky note.
Art who could never remember passwords. Art who kept keys hidden in obvious places. Who had a box of blueprints of a secret criminal underground lying available in his bedroom closet.
Adrenaline floods through me so fast my stomach cramps. “I think I know where it is.”
Lance swings his head to me, his eyes wide.“What?”
“You’ve been inside this place?” my father asks.
“More than once.”
Something passes across his face that I can’t fully read. Fear. Pride. Horror that his daughter has been that close to the machine that’s been grinding her life to pieces.
“If the FBI had that footage,” my father says, “combined with my testimony and the financial evidence they’ve already compiled, it would be enough. More than enough. It would be the kill shot.”
“Then we get it,” I say.
“It’s not that simple,mon chou.”
“It’s exactly that simple. I know where it is. I know the layout. I’ve been down there.”
“Genevieve.”
“Don’tGenevieveme.” I pull my hands from his. “You went dark for months to protect me. Lance has been in a cage for six years to protect everyone around him. I’m done being the person everyone protects. I’m getting that footage. I’msavingus all, and none of you will stop me.”
My father looks at Lance. Some unspoken thing passesbetween them, and I don’t know if it’s respect or resignation or the shared understanding of two men who love the same woman and know I will out stubborn them to death.
“Not tonight,” my father says. “Tonight, you eat. You sleep in a real bed. And tomorrow, we plan.”
Every nerve in my body is screaming to move, to act, to stop sitting still while the clock ticks and the people who did this to us keep breathing.
But my father is standing, and he’s moving to the kitchen, and he’s pulling a copper pot from the cabinet.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” He rolls up his sleeves, and for the first time since I walked through the door, he looks like himself. “My daughter just drove hours to find me. The least I can do is feed her.”
“Papa.”
“Sit down, Genevieve.”
I sit, the same way I always do when he tells me.
He opens the fridge and starts pulling things out. Chicken, shallots, thyme. A bottle of wine that’s too good for cooking but he’s never cared about that.
Coq au vin.
Of course it is.
My eyes burn again, and I press my fingers against them because I can’t keep crying in front of Lance, except when I look over, he’s watching my father move around the kitchen with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. Soft. Almost reverent. Like he’s watching something holy.
And I realize it’s because he doesn’t have this. He’s never had this. A parent who cooks for you when the world falls apart.A kitchen that smells like home. Seven seconds of being held like you matter.
I reach under the table and find his hand. He flinches, then holds on.
