Thomas wanted the ledger.
I turned toward him.
“To destroy it?”
“To authenticate it.”
Michael laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
Thomas looked tired.
“I’ve spent forty years knowing you wouldn’t.”
He admitted that at nineteen he had helped erase evidence.
Not because he participated in the m/u/rder, but because he was afraid.
One of the men threatened him.
Thomas obeyed.
“I hated myself for it,” he said.
“You should,” Michael replied.
Thomas absorbed the blow.
“Yes.”
Then he placed a flash drive on the desk.
“I spent twenty years reconstructing what happened.”
Michael stared.
“Why?”
“Because the man behind it never disappeared.”
“Who?”
“Charles Mercer.”
Michael went still.
The name meant nothing to me.
Thomas explained.
Mercer managed the financial side of the organization.
He disappeared overseas after the original investigation.
Everyone assumed he had d/i/ed.
Three months earlier, Thomas received a message.
