We had played Uno at the kitchen table.
The boy had warmed slowly, then smiled when I groaned theatrically about drawing four cards. Before David took him away, Liam had thanked me with stiff careful manners and called me Miss Emma.
Later that night I had asked when I was finally going to meet this mysterious Tom.
David had gone very still for one split second.
“He travels a lot,” he had said. “I’ll introduce you sometime.”
Now I understood.
That was his son.
His actual son.
“David brought him to you on purpose,” Carter said, confirming the thought. “It was the only time in five years he brought his real life into contact with his assignment. We think he hoped that if everything collapsed, you would fight for Liam.”
“Where has Liam been?”
“With a nanny in a house Marcus owns in Georgetown,” Carter said. “Homeschooled. Isolated. David visited twice a week. The nanny reported him missing this morning. Right around the time of your father’s funeral.”
Marcus had taken his own grandson.
“Why?” I asked.
“Insurance,” Carter said. “Marcus thinks David has become compromised. The deepfake call, the men in your house, the timing of all this—that’s Marcus accelerating the confrontation. He doesn’t trust his son anymore.”
He brought up a blueprint of the plant.
“We believe Marcus has given David an ultimatum. Kill you and Richard by dawn—six a.m.—or Marcus kills Liam.”
The cruelty of it left me numb.
