Page 92 of The Moment He Couldn’t Walk Away

“It was Jay’s idea,” Sawyer said. “I called him after you left and ran through it with him. Dan and he had already talked after he’d learned your father’s name, Nina.”

“Soon everyone in this town will know,” Finch muttered.

“I can help, but let me answer this call first,” Jay said, then walked toward the front entrance.

Nina didn’t know all the details of what Jay Haddon did, but she knew it was to do with national security.

When he returned to the table and sat back down, his face was calm as he placed his phone carefully on the table before him. “I’ve got someone pulling Falcon’s current status now. But while we wait, Nina, I need you to think about something, and I need you to think about it carefully.”

She looked at him.

“When your mother left Dale Falcon, how quickly did she leave Arizona?”

Nina shook her head slowly. “I don’t know the details. She never talked about him, and I didn’t know he was alive. But the letter she left me after she died said she had two choices when they arrested him. Stay and wait for him, or run. She ran, which suggested it was in a hurry.”

“If she ran, then she probably only took what she could fit in a car,” Jay said. “It’s possible she packed fast and took something without realizing what it was. A document, a hard drive, or a number written on a piece of paper tucked inside a book she grabbed off a shelf. Something she didn’t know she had.”

“Something that could still mean a great deal to Dale Falcon,” Dan added quietly. “Years later.”

“Unfinished business,” Finch said.

Like her, they didn’t believe he wanted to find his daughter to reconnect, and while she told herself she didn’t need that man, there was a small part of her that needed him to care about her—even just a little.

Nina felt Finch’s hand settle on top of hers under the table and hadn’t even realized she’d clenched it into a fist on her thigh. Turning it over, she linked fingers with him, needing the contact.

“I looked into the case notes for Falcon’s arrest, which I’m sure you and Dan have,” Jay said to Sheriff Dans. “Two of his men took plea deals and gave evidence against Falcon, but federal cases like this rarely pull up everything. There are threads that don’t get followed, associates who don’t get charged, and money that doesn’t get found.” He looked back at Nina. “If your mother left with something that could unravel any of that, or he had the time to hide something before the police arrived, he may want it back now.”

“He might have kept things running from prison,” Sheriff Dans cut in. “We all know that happens.”

“But if it’s important, why leave it where someone could find it? Why not put it somewhere he could access when he got out?” Lynx asked.

“Like Jay said, maybe he didn’t have time to do more than hide it. Or maybe he didn’t think Nina’s mom would ever leave him?” Finch suggested.

Nina thought about her mother’s things. Boxes she packed and stored, but never looked at again. The things in the Murrays’ storage shed. There were books her mother had carried from house to house their entire lives, also in boxes.

“The books,” Nina said.

Everyone looked at her.

“She had this small collection of books she brought with us. Five of them. She read them over and over and told me an aunt she loved gave them to her. They’re packed in a box at the Murrays’. There are other things stored in boxes in my closet, too, and some of those may have come from when she was with him, my father.” The word felt strange on her lips.

“Then we need to look through those too,” Finch said.

Jay’s phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up, and when he read the screen, his expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did. He set the phone down again with a deliberate care that made Nina’s skin prickle.

“Dale Falcon flew into Denver two weeks ago. He hired a car from there, but since that day, there has been no trace of him. Since Denver, he hasn’t used a credit card or his own name to book into accommodation. The question is why?” Jay said.

“How the fuck did you come up with that, when Uncle Asher and I have been hunting him since her mother passed away?” Dan asked, looking ten shades of pissed off.

“I have contacts and know the right places to look. Plus, it wasn’t hard to track flight records,” Jay said with a slight smirk designed to annoy his best friend. “But I haven’t got to the good part yet. Shirley Falcon changed her name and that of her daughter to Shirley and Nina Winters in Oklahoma County District Court the same year her husband was put in prison.”

“You found that out this morning?” Nina asked, grappling with what she was being told.

“No. I started digging into things when I knew about your father from Dan, in case you needed the details, and trouble came calling with your father’s release.”

“Which means if someone wanted to find out that information about the name change, they could too,” Lynx added.

“He gets out,” Finch said, his voice low and hard, “then two months later, someone is going through your house, and when that didn’t give them what they needed, they set fire to it.”