Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE BESIDE THE FROZEN LAKETax records led them to northern Maine.
A small house stood beside a frozen lake.
Smoke curled from the chimney.
Noah approached alone.
He knocked.
An older man opened the door.
Gray hair.
Lean face.
Scar above his eyebrow.
Jonathan.
He looked at Noah and whispered his name immediately.
“Noah.”
Hope and grief collided.
“Where's my father?”
Jonathan's expression answered before his mouth did.
“Thomas died in 2011.”
Noah refused to believe him.
Cancer.
Pancreatic.
Fast.
Merciless.
But Jonathan revealed another twist.
Orion had not killed him after Blackwater.
They imprisoned him in private facilities.
Thomas eventually found him.
And the person who made that possible was Claire.
Noah's quiet librarian mother had spent years tracing shell companies, payments and medical transfers.
She found Jonathan.
Then Thomas.
Claire and Thomas met secretly three times.
Noah felt betrayed.
“Why didn't he see me?”
“Because Orion was still watching you.”
Thomas had already lost his life once.
He refused to risk Noah's.
And when he became terminally ill, Claire helped him disappear one final time.
Thomas Reed was buried at Arlington.
Under another man's name.
Lieutenant Benjamin Cole.
Mercer went pale.
Because Benjamin Cole had supposedly died during Blackwater.
Jonathan looked at him.
“No.”
May you like
Then he delivered the impossible truth.
“Benjamin Cole survived.”
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