Chapter 2 #2
“Stone cold sober.” His expression didn’t change. “I needed you to think I was just some sad guy rambling into his Scotch. Someone you’d feel a little sorry for, maybe, but wouldn’t take too seriously.”
More details from the encounter began to surface — the way the stranger had clammed up when pressed about what he meant, and the twenty he’d left with some reluctance on the bar. And then….
“The photo,” Ben said slowly. “Sidney’s graduation picture. You dropped it on purpose.”
“I did.”
“You wanted me to find it and see ‘Silver Hollow’ written on the back.”
“I wanted to see what you’d do with it.” The other man’s voice was calm, almost clinical. “I wanted to see whether you’d hand the photo to the bartender and forget about it, or whether you’d be curious enough to dig deeper. A lot of people would have just let it go.”
But Ben hadn’t let it go. He’d gone back to his hotel room and spent hours researching Silver Hollow, falling down a rabbit hole of tourism websites and Reddit forums until he’d found that one buried post about a glowing white horse in the woods.
He’d changed his flight the next morning, maxed out his credit card on a rental car and a room at the only bed-and-breakfast in town, and driven into the mountains to chase a rumor that had seemed too strange to be true.
And all of it — every single step — had been orchestrated by the man standing in front of him now.
“You manipulated me,” Ben said, his voice flat. “That whole thing in the bar, the dropped photo — it was all a setup to get me to come here.”
“No,” Finn said calmly, “it was a test. I needed to know what kind of person you were before I pointed you toward my daughter. Whether you were the type to chase a mystery for the truth of it, or whether you’d just be looking to turn whatever you found into your next viral episode.
” He paused, and the faintest hint of a smile touched one corner of his mouth. “You passed.”
“I passed.” Ben allowed himself a chuckle, the sound harsh even to his own ears. “And what if I hadn’t? What if I’d just handed that photo to the bartender and gone home to Yucaipa like I was supposed to?”
“Then I would have found another way…or another person.” Finn Lowell’s dark eyes…
so unlike his daughter’s crystal gray…were steady on Ben’s face.
“DAPI had already flagged you as a potential asset. If you hadn’t come to Silver Hollow on your own, they would have recruited you eventually, would have sent you here with a handler and a set of protocols and your first loyalty to the agency instead of to Sidney. ”
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
Finn reached into his jacket pocket and Ben tensed, but all the man pulled out was a phone. He tapped the screen a few times and then held it out for him to see. “This is from a database I’ve had access to for years. It’s a list of persons of interest flagged by DAPI’s recruitment algorithm.”
When Ben looked down at the screen, his own face stared back at him.
He recognized the photo easily enough; it was from his YouTube channel, an image that showed him standing in front of the Sonoran Desert dig site where he’d had his first unexplained encounter.
Below the photo was a list of data points: his academic credentials, his publication history, his travel records, his known associates.
And at the bottom, highlighted in red, were the words, Recommended for Silver Hollow deployment. Probability of asset conversion: 78%.
“They were going to recruit you,” Finn said, still in that even, quiet tone. “The only question was whether you’d belong to them when you got here, or whether you’d be free to make your own choices.” He put the phone away. “I just made sure it was the latter.”
Ben’s hands had started to shake. Rather than allow them to betray him, he shoved them in his jacket pockets, willing the charge beneath his skin to settle so he could think clearly through the anger that had begun to cloud his mind.
“So, you set all of this in motion,” he said. “Me coming here, meeting Sidney, falling in love with her, nearly dying for her — ”
“I set you on a path,” Finn broke in, but gently.
“What you did once you got here was entirely up to you. I couldn’t control whether you’d actually make the trip, or whether you’d stay once you arrived.
And I certainly couldn’t control whether my daughter would even give you the time of day.
” Something that might have been a smile touched his mouth again and then disappeared.
“That part actually surprised me. Sidney doesn’t usually warm up to outsiders. ”
Was he supposed to feel flattered? “So…what was the plan, then? If DAPI was going to recruit me anyway, what difference did it make if I showed up on my own?”
“It made all the difference in the world.” Finn glanced at the house again, and this time, his expression was unguarded, filled with something that looked like longing.
“DAPI’s assets come with strings attached.
If they’d sent you here, you would have belonged to them.
Your first loyalty would have been to the agency, not to Sidney.
” He looked back at Ben, gaze sharpening.
“I needed someone whose first loyalty would be to her, someone who would protect her for her own sake and not because a government agency told them to.”
This still didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Voice hard, Ben asked, “And you decided that based on whether or not I’d follow up on a dropped photograph?”
“I decided it based on six months of research before that night ever happened,” Finn said coolly.
“I know more about you than you probably know about yourself, Ben. I know about your academic career, your win in your school district’s science fair when you were fourteen, that you’re subscribed to ten different print magazines.
And I know that you’ve been in love exactly twice before Sidney, and that the last time was to a woman who ended things when you wouldn’t get a ‘real job.’” He paused there before adding, “And I know that when Rosenthal pointed that weapon at my daughter, you stepped in front of it without hesitating. That told me everything I needed to know about whether I’d made the right choice. ”
What in the world was he supposed to say to all that?
Since he couldn’t think of a ready reply, Ben instead remained quiet for a moment.
The green lightning flickered overhead, casting strange shadows on the pavement, and in the distance, he heard a dog bark once and then fall silent, as if fearful of the attention that sound might have invited.
“You could have told her,” he said at last. “You could have come back and explained what you were doing. You could have been part of her life instead of watching from the shadows like some kind of — ”
“Some kind of what?” Another interruption, but Finn’s voice sounded almost tired now. “A ghost? A stalker? A coward?” He shook his head. “I’ve called myself all of those things, Ben, and worse. But the truth is more complicated than any of them.”
“Then uncomplicate it.”
The older man was silent for a few beats, his dark eyes distant. When he spoke again, his voice wasn’t much more than a murmur, as if he was telling these things to himself as much as he was relating them to Ben.
“I’m a mundane,” he said simply. “No abilities, no connection to the portal network, nothing. Just a normal human who happened to fall in love with a woman from a very unusual family.” He paused.
“When Sidney was young, that didn’t matter much.
But as she got older, as her abilities started to emerge, I realized I was becoming a liability, a weak point that could be exploited by anyone who wanted to get to her or Josie or Emily. ”
Ben’s jaw hardened. “So you left.” You took the easy way out, floated through his mind, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I removed myself from the equation.” Finn’s mouth went tight for a moment, and he went on, “I set up a perimeter. I built a network of contacts and surveillance capabilities that would let me know if anyone came sniffing around my family before they got close enough to do real damage.” Then his gaze met Ben’s, and his expression was bleak.
“It wasn’t enough, though. DAPI got through anyway.
Rosenthal got through. And now something worse is waking up, something I can’t stop with just surveillance and contacts. ”
“The Dragon,” Ben said.
A hint of surprise flashed in the older man’s eyes, but then he nodded.
“I don’t know what it is, not really. Josie told me once that Emily’s journals mentioned it, but only in passing — Ignis Aeternus, everlasting fire.
Whatever it is, it’s been sleeping under this town for longer than recorded history, and now it’s fully awake.
” He looked at the sky, at the green lightning and the bruised purple clouds.
“This weather isn’t natural. It’s a symptom.
The veil between worlds is thinning because the Dragon’s rising is disrupting the entire portal network. ”
Words that were eerily familiar. “Sidney said something like that this morning.”
“Sidney understands more than she realizes. More than I ever could.” Finn’s voice softened as he continued.
“She’s stronger than her mother was at her age, stronger than Emily.
The merge with the phoenix changed her, unlocked something that’s been dormant in that bloodline for generations.
” He paused before adding, “But she’s going to need help.
More help than I can give her…and more than you can give her alone. ”
Ben studied the older man’s face, searching for the lie, the angle, the manipulation. He’d been fooled once already, that night in the bar in San Francisco. He didn’t want to be fooled again.
But all he saw in Finn Lowell’s eyes was exhaustion, and fear, and something that looked a lot like love.
“Why now?” Ben asked. “Why show yourself now, after seventeen years?”
“Because what’s coming is bigger than anything you’ve seen before.
Because my daughter is going to face something that could destroy her, and I — ” Finn stopped himself there, his voice catching.
He took a breath and steadied himself before he went on, “I can’t protect her from a distance anymore. Not from this.”
The front door of the house opened, and they both turned. Sidney stood on the porch, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold, her clear gray gaze moving from Ben to her father and back again. Her expression was unreadable.
“I thought you said you’d be right back,” she called, and her voice had a flat aspect that Ben had learned to recognize as suppressed emotion.
“I got waylaid.” Ben looked at Finn, then back at Sidney. “We have a visitor.”
She came down the porch steps, moving carefully, and then stopped about ten feet from where they stood, her gaze fixed on her father’s face. The green lightning flickered overhead, casting her delicate features in strange relief.
“Hello, Sidney,” Finn said quietly.
“You’ve been watching the house.” Her voice was calm, but Ben could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands had curled into loose fists at her sides. “Ben spotted your SUV three days ago.”
“I know. I wasn’t trying particularly hard to hide.” Finn’s dark eyes never left his daughter’s face. They were almost hungry, as if he wanted to take in every detail, every line and curve of a face he hadn’t seen this close up for a very long time. “I was waiting for the right moment to approach.”
One eyebrow lifted. “And an earthquake seemed like the right moment?”
“The Dragon waking up seemed like I’d run out of time to wait.”
Sidney didn’t respond right away, only stood there in silence.
Ben watched her face, trying to read what was happening behind those gray eyes, but she’d gone somewhere he couldn’t follow.
Seventeen years of abandonment and silence, seventeen years of canceled checks and empty holidays, all compressed into this single moment on a cold October morning while the sky crawled with unnatural light.
“You’d better come inside,” she said at last. “We have a lot to talk about.”
She turned and walked back toward the house without waiting to see if they’d follow. Ben looked over at Finn, who was staring after his daughter with an expression of naked vulnerability.
“She’s angry,” he said.
“She has every right to be.”
“I know.” Finn pulled in a breath and seemed to gather himself. “But she’s also willing to listen. That’s more than I expected.”
“Don’t mistake willingness to listen for forgiveness,” Ben told him. “Sidney doesn’t give that easily. And neither do I.”
Without waiting for an answer, he followed Sidney toward the house, leaving Finn to trail behind them. The earth hummed beneath his feet, and overhead, the green lightning crawled through the clouds like something alive and searching.
The Dragon was awake. And Finn Lowell had finally come home.