Chapter 9 - Unearthing the Truth
The afternoon sun filtered through the plate-glass windows of the diner, casting long, sharp shadows across the floor where Sheriff Harper had been sitting moments before.
"Read it?" Vance asked quietly.
"Not here," I said, looking around the familiar, worn walls of the place where I had grown up. "Let's close up early today, Mom."
My mother looked around the empty dining room, then down at her apron—stained in the shape of Ohio, exactly as it had been for decades. A small, genuine smile touched the corners of her lips for the first time in six years.
"The sign says we close at two on Fridays anyway," she said, her voice steadying. "Let's go home, Nicole."
Leaving Kayla in charge of locking up the front register with instructions to call the county maintenance board to remove the Cain Realty sign from the front lawn, my mother, Major Vance, and I walked out into the crisp North Carolina air.
As we drove down Route 9 toward the family home, I stared out the window at the long, gentle curve where my father’s life had been stolen. It wasn't a blind curve at all. From the passenger seat, I could see clear across the valley—a straight, unbroken stretch of road that had been deliberately turned into a graveyard by greedy men who thought nobody would ever look twice.
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They had counted on fear. They had counted on silence.
They hadn't counted on a daughter who wore the uniform and knew how to read the maps.
