The unit inside wasn’t a storage space. It was a war room.
Monitors lined one wall, showing live security feeds from the facility and nearby streets. Another wall was covered with maps of Austin and the surrounding area, marked with colored pins and circles. A cot sat in one corner beside a small refrigerator. File boxes were stacked neatly along the back wall.
And in the middle of it all, rising from a folding chair, was my father.
Richard Martinez.
Alive.
My knees gave out. I caught myself on the door frame and barely stayed upright.
The world narrowed to his face. Older than I remembered even from yesterday. More tired. More worn around the eyes. But him. Unmistakably, impossibly him.
“Emma.”
His voice broke on my name.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make my mind accept what my eyes were seeing.
He took one cautious step toward me, hands out, like he was approaching a frightened animal.
“I know this is—”
“You’re dead.”
The words tore out of me.
“I saw you yesterday. At the funeral home. I kissed your forehead.”
His face twisted with guilt.
“That wasn’t me,” he said softly. “That was a reconstruction. A silicone dummy. FBI specialists made it for the viewing. Same height, same build, prosthetics matched to my features. The funeral home kept the casket mostly closed and the lighting dim.”
“Compensated by who?” I asked, the question coming out sharper than grief, sharper than disbelief.
“The FBI,” Carter answered from behind me. “As part of your father’s protective arrangement.”
I shook my head like I could clear reality back into place.
People did not fake their deaths. Bodies were not swapped out with lifelike decoys. The FBI did not stage funerals like something out of a crime thriller.
Apparently they did.
“I need you to sit down,” Dad said.
He gestured to a folding chair opposite his.
“I need to tell you things that are going to be hard to hear. Things I should have told you years ago.”
“Mom.”
That was all I could manage.
“Where’s Mom? She’s not answering her phone.”
His face changed. The guilt gave way to something worse.
Devastation.
“That’s what I need to tell you.”
He moved to one of the monitors and pulled up footage from earlier that day.
A street.
My parents’ street.
Mom pulling up after the funeral.
A black SUV.
Two men getting out.
