CHAPTER 11 LYRA
LYRA
The first page was nothing but names. Aliases. Thomas, Tomasso, and Tomás appeared most frequently, but there were other first names peppered in. Among the dozens of surnames listed, three and only three were asterisked.
Drakos, Reyes, and Aquila.
Lyra turned the page with her free hand, but instead of details on those asterisks, what she got was a police report. The second Lyra saw it, her field of vision narrowed, her breath coming more quickly as individual phrases jumped out at her.
Gunshot wounds—
Self-inflicted—
No witnesses.
“No witnesses?” Lyra whispered. She forced herself to read the report, word for word, from the beginning, never letting go of Grayson’s hand.
The report, dated two days after Lyra’s fourth birthday, indicated that the dead man had broken into a stranger’s home while the owner was on vacation and shot himself inside.
It wasn’t his house. The fatal injuries listed in the report tracked with what Lyra remembered, but there was no mention anywhere of a calla lily, a symbol written in blood on the wall, or a child.
No mention that Lyra had been there at all.
There was, however, documentation of a note that the victim had supposedly left behind, explaining his financial woes and laying the blame for his suicide squarely at the feet of billionaire Tobias Hawthorne and his predatory business practices.
“My father didn’t write this,” Lyra said.
She felt that in her bones. Her father hadn’t killed himself for run-of-the-mill financial reasons, and Tobias Hawthorne wasn’t the Hawthorne he’d held responsible for his death.
A Hawthorne was. “But why would Alice connect my father’s death to the Hawthorne family at all? ” Lyra asked. “Why forge this note?”
“To ensure the local sheriff’s department wouldn’t question why a man like Tobias Hawthorne might want the whole affair put to bed quickly and quietly,” Grayson replied. “Cleanly.”
He was right, Lyra realized. It was like the entire case had been tied up with a billionaire’s bow. Quickly. Quietly. Cleanly.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Lyra bit out. “I was there. How could anyone cover that up? The police would have found me first. I remember running out into the night—footsteps on pavement. I remember—”
Lyra stopped suddenly, because she didn’t remember, had never remembered the moment when she’d been found. She’d only recently remembered seeing Alice Hawthorne that night.
You should not be here, the black-cloaked woman had told Lyra. But who is to say that you were?
Grayson shifted his chair around to Lyra’s side of the table.
Together, they read the report again, from the beginning.
The investigation had identified the victim as Thomas Valasquez via a driver’s license found on the body.
If forensics of any kind had been run to confirm that identity, the report didn’t contain them.
If the sheriff’s department had any idea that Thomas Valasquez was not their victim’s real name, the report gave no indication of that, either.
Tied up with a bow. Put to bed. Something like fury rose in Lyra, and she forced herself to go past the end of the written report this time—to the crime scene photos.
Blood. His face is gone.
It was just like Lyra remembered, but the wall—the wall on which her father had drawn the omega symbol in his own blood—was nothing but bloody streaks, the symbol destroyed.
“You don’t have to do this,” Grayson murmured, his voice a low, warm hum that cut through the ice in Lyra’s veins.
“Yes, I do.”
The next few photographs were of the victim’s effects. A wallet. Credit cards. The driver’s license they used to identify him. Lyra stared at a close-up of the license, and Thomas Valasquez stared back.
Lyra stopped breathing.
She flipped to the next page and the next and the next and the next until she was through with the police report and onto the results of a private investigation that was date-stamped as being less than a year old.
The PI’s notes made it clear that the investigator had been charged with finding a teenage girl, the daughter of the dead man.
“Eve was looking for you,” Grayson inferred. “My guess would be that she intercepted our calls somehow and—”
Lyra barely even heard him as she made her way through the PI’s report, the world threatening to spin around her. She stopped on the second-to-last page, which contained copies of two more driver’s licenses and a mugshot. She registered the names.
Thomas Aquila. Tomasso Drakos. Tomás Reyes.
“I don’t understand,” Lyra said harshly. Aquila, Drakos, Reyes, and Valasquez—they were all very clearly the same man. But that man—
“Lyra?”
These photographs, all of them—
“This isn’t him,” Lyra whispered. The man in these pictures had eyes that looked nothing like Lyra’s. The shape was wrong. The color was wrong. And the rest of the man’s features—Lyra couldn’t visualize a damn thing, let alone her father’s face, but she knew.
Looking at these photographs, at this man, Lyra felt nothing. She couldn’t so much as hear her father’s voice.
Not him. Not him. Not him. Lyra flipped to the final page in the file. One last photograph. In it, the man from all the other photographs—the man that no part of Lyra recognized—was holding a dark-haired, chubby-cheeked baby who looked to be clapping her hands.
And standing next to him in that picture was Lyra’s mother. This doesn’t make sense. None of this made any sense.
The next thing Lyra knew, she had her phone in her hand.
Her mom picked up on the third ring. “If this is a telemarketer, be warned that I’m a writer, and I am always looking for people to fictionally kill.”
“Mom. It’s me.”
“Lyra? This isn’t your number. Say something to prove you’re you and not an AI hoax.”
“Toothpick,” Lyra said, her voice coming out hoarse. “Ice cube. Bikini bottoms.”
“Things that could be weapons. It is you!”
“Mom.” Lyra stared at the photo in front of her and tried to form a question—a coherent, cogent question—but came up short. “I’m switching you over to a video call,” Lyra said, and then she did, aiming the camera at the page.
“A picture of you and me with Tomás.” Lyra’s mom was infamous for rolling with the punches. “Not his best angle, but you’re adorable, and I look cute.”
“No.” Lyra’s voice shook.
“I assure you, Lyra Catalina, those bangs made perfect sense at the time.”
None of this makes sense. Lyra couldn’t form a single word. She couldn’t even feel Grayson next to her anymore.
“What’s this about, baby? Where did you get that photo? You know if you have questions about your bio-father, you can always—”
“No.” Lyra felt like the word had been ripped out of her, like the earth should have trembled with the sound that had just left her mouth. “You always said he left when I was three days old.” But that wasn’t the really the problem. That wasn’t—
I’m your father, Lyra.
Happy birthday, Lyra.
A Hawthorne did this.
“This isn’t him,” Lyra whispered. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take back what she was about to say, but she wrenched open Pandora’s box anyway, consequences be damned. “This man isn’t the man who took me—the man with the gun.”