Chapter 4 - The House of Stolen Mirrors
Richard Vance crossed the threshold like a man entering his own execution chamber.
He had removed his suit jacket; his white dress shirt was wrinkled, stained with yellow coffee rings around the collar, and unbuttoned at the throat. His silver hair, usually parted with military precision, stood in wild, disheveled tufts. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, the skin beneath them sagging into dark, bruised hollows.
He took three halting steps into the room, his eyes darting between my cast, the monitors, and the scarred man standing beside my bed.
When his gaze locked onto Lucas, Richard stopped. A sound came from his chest—a high, keening wail that didn't sound human.
“Luke…” Richard fell to his knees on the linoleum, his hands clawing at the fabric of Lucas’s hospital trousers. “Luke, my boy… you’re here. You’re really here.”
Lucas didn't look down at him. He didn't offer a hand. He stood as rigid as an iron beam, his fingers resting lightly on the carbon-fiber crutch.
“Get up, Dad,” Lucas said, his tone devoid of any filial warmth. It was the voice he used when debriefing an undisciplined subaltern who had gotten his squad ambushed.
“I didn't know!” Richard wept, pressing his forehead against Lucas’s knee. “I swear to you on your mother’s grave, Luke! I thought you were gone! Linda showed me the telegram… she brought the casualty officer to the house!”
“The casualty officer was a retired lieutenant commander on Linda’s payroll, Richard,” General Hayes interrupted from the doorway, his arms crossed over his medals. “He was stripped of his pension six hours ago and is currently singing to federal investigators in New York. You were a full colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, Richard. You knew the protocol for casualty notifications. You knew a two-star general personally comes to the house for an MIA flag. Why didn't you verify it?”
Richard slowly lifted his head, his face contorted in agony.
“Because I was tired,” Richard whispered, the pathetic truth spilling out like rancid oil. “Eleanor had just died… the house was so empty… Linda was so strong. She took care of the paperwork. She took care of the accounts. She told me I didn't have to carry the weight anymore. She said… she said she would handle everything so I could just grieve.”
“And while you were grieving,” Lucas said, looking down at his father with eyes like cold slate, “she was locking Maya in the pantry.”
Richard flinched as if he had been slapped across the mouth.
“She was sixteen years old, Dad,” Lucas said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, vibrating whisper. “Mom had been dead for six months. You were drinking three bottles of scotch a day in your study with the curtains drawn. Linda took Mom’s wedding rings out of the safe. When Maya asked for them, Linda told her that little sluts who look like their dead mothers don't deserve diamonds. And when Maya tried to tell you, Linda told you Maya had stolen cash from your wallet to buy drugs.”
Richard looked at me, horror creeping into his eyes. “Maya… you told me… you said you lost that necklace…”
“I didn't lose anything, Dad,” I said, looking straight at him, my voice flat, empty of the tears I had wasted on him ten years ago. “Linda took Mom’s emerald pendant and had it reset into a ring for Trevor’s eighteenth birthday. He wore it to his high school graduation while I was sitting in the back row wearing a dress I bought at Goodwill with my own babysitting money.”
Richard covered his ears, shaking his head frantically. “No… no, Trevor told me he bought that ring with his summer job money… he told me—”
“Trevor never had a summer job in his entire miserable life!” Lucas roared, the sound making the heart monitor beside me spike. “Trevor lived off the dividend checks from Mom’s trust! While Maya was eating expired canned soup in the basement room because Linda said the second floor was ‘reserved for family,’ Trevor was crashing Mercedes-Benzes in the Hamptons and having the repairs billed to our mother’s estate!”
Lucas reached down, grabbed his father by the collar of his dress shirt, and hauled the older man to his feet with terrifying, one-armed strength.
“Look at her,” Lucas commanded, shaking Richard until the older man’s eyes were forced to look at my broken arm, the burns on my neck, and the bruises under my eyes. “Look at what your cowardice did! You let that viper poison our home, steal our mother’s legacy, and turn our sister into a ghost! And today, when she stood on that stage to receive the medal she earned saving my life, your wife tried to break her skull open while your bastard stepson laughed!”
Richard couldn't hold his son’s gaze. He looked at the floor, his shoulders heaving, his entire body trembling like a wet dog.
“Where is Trevor now?” I asked General Hayes, cutting through the agonizing family autopsy.
Hayes checked his phone. “He slipped out of Fort Meade during the confusion after Linda was detained. Our surveillance units tracked his phone to the Greenwich estate forty minutes ago. He thinks he’s packing cash and passports to catch the red-eye to Zurich.”
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“He won't make it to the airport,” Lucas said, releasing his father’s collar so abruptly that Richard stumbled back against the wall. “Not if the CID team does their job.”
“They aren't alone up there,” Hayes said, a grim smile touching the corners of his mouth. “The FBI sent the SWAT team from the New Haven field office. They breached the front gates five minutes ago.”
