Chapter 15 - THE FATHER WITHOUT A NAME
Maya had spent her life imagining both parents as victims.
The video destroyed that certainty.
Matthew placed a personnel file before the camera.
The name had been partially burned.
Only the last name remained.
Reed.
Maya’s foster surname was Reed.
She stared at the screen.
“Was that name assigned to me by accident?”
Agent Brooks shook her head.
“Temporary names are usually selected randomly.”
“But someone may have influenced the paperwork.”
The file identified Maya’s father as Nathan Reed.
A civilian intelligence contractor.
He worked with General Cross.
He also worked secretly for Conrad Vaughn.
Evelyn discovered his betrayal shortly before Maya’s birth.
Nathan promised to help her escape.
Instead, he provided the convoy route.
But Matthew’s video continued.
“Nathan Reed believed General Cross planned to take his daughter away.”
“Vaughn convinced him that the convoy was only meant to frighten them.”
“When Nathan learned Vaughn intended to kill Alexander and imprison Evelyn, he attempted to stop the attack.”
“He failed.”
Maya’s emotions shifted too quickly to name.
Her father had betrayed the convoy.
Then tried to save it.
He was neither innocent nor simple.
“Is he alive?” she asked.
Matthew answered the question from the screen.
“Nathan survived.”
“He took a new identity.”
“He has remained near Amelia for most of her life.”
Maya’s skin turned cold.
Photographs appeared.
A maintenance worker outside her group home.
A bus driver who drove her to high school.
A janitor at her college library.
The same man.
Older in every image.
Always nearby.
Maya remembered him.
Mr. Reed.
The quiet custodian who fixed the broken heater in her dorm.
The man who once told her she deserved a life bigger than the one she had been given.
She had assumed Reed was a common name.
Now she understood.
“He watched me.”
Vance looked at the photographs.
“He may have been protecting you.”
“He never told me who he was.”
Maya’s anger returned.
“Everyone keeps calling silence protection.”
A current address appeared inside the file.
Nathan Reed lived less than ten miles from Maya’s apartment.
Federal agents went to the house.
They found the front door open.
The rooms were empty.
On the kitchen table was a recent photograph of Rose.
Beside it was Maya’s missing red blanket.
A note had been written on the back.
I could not save your mother.
I will save your daughter.
Maya called the nurse caring for Rose.
No one answered.
She called again.
The line went directly to voicemail.
Agent Brooks contacted hospital security.
Rose’s room was empty.
May you like
The nurse had disappeared.
And the security camera showed Nathan Reed carrying Maya’s baby through a side exit.
