Chapter 7
It had been ten years since Noah had heard that voice with the slight Mexican accent.
Ten fucking years. Noah knew the exact number.
He'd counted every one of them carefully, from a distance.
They were attached to something he couldn't put down and couldn't pick up either—aware of the weight without lifting it.
Ten years since he'd driven away from that prison and told himself it was the last time because there was no way to reconcile the two versions of his father.
The automated recording finished its sentence.
Matias Salazar.
Six syllables in his father's own voice, and Noah's entire body registered them before his brain had a chance to intervene.
Noah's thumb sat over the screen as he forced himself to breathe.
He was aware of Ziggy’s living room the way he was aware of the control room during a live broadcast—not looking at any one thing but taking in all of it at once.
Ziggy to his left, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her without touching her.
Jag stood near the fireplace. Troy was leaning so far forward in the armchair that he'd abandoned any pretense of being relaxed, which was odd for him.
Cormac moved along the wall without making a sound.
He raised his cell, showing a recording app.
And thanks to the fact that all prison calls from inmates were recorded, it gave the other party implied consent. Noah nodded, Cormac tapped the little green button, and Noah accepted the charges.
“Hello.” It was a single word. Nothing special. Noah had said it a million times. But it didn’t roll off his tongue easily in this moment.
"Is this Noah Chase?" His father’s voice, which was deep and still carried a hint of their heritage, rattled Noah’s chest. "I need to speak with Noah Chase."
His father knew his voice. His father had heard it on television for over a decade. He would know in one syllable that he was talking to his son.
Noah looked up. Jag caught his eye and mouthed two words. Play along.
"This is he,” Noah said.
“Mr. Chase, I’m sure you know who I am.” The words seeped into Noah’s body with a chill, occupying whatever space was available.
“I am,” Noah said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you would be the best person to handle this situation.”
Noah glanced around the room. Troy, Cormac, and Jag hadn’t moved.
But Ziggy had managed to get pen and paper.
To her, it never mattered if a session was being recorded, she wanted to make notes.
She called it pulling out the power words.
Or finding the nuggets. And, he had to admit, he was curious about what she was scribbling right now.
Or maybe he just needed a distraction. “I’m sorry, Mr. Salazar,” Noah said, following the pretense. “But I don’t understand.”
“The interview with your colleague, Hugh Ender. I didn't agree to it. At least, not like he’s representing it.”
“If that’s true, then why would a respected reporter make that statement in front of the federal prison where you’re currently housed?” Noah asked, doing his best to keep the reporter side of him front and center.
“I don’t know.”
Noah didn’t believe that for one second. “Let me ask you this, did you meet with Hugh? Did you and Hugh have a conversation? And I wouldn’t lie about that because prisons keep those records, and it’s something I could easily find out.” Fuck. Noah shouldn’t taunt his father like that.
Matias chuckled. It was that same low, soft laugh Noah had heard in his youth. The one that normally made him smile. Now it gave him heartburn.
“I did meet with him, but he lied to me, and now he’s manipulating me.”
Noah bit back his own laugh. “Care to explain?”
“He told me he was representing your show and that you’d be the one doing the interview. I told him I'd consider it, but only if my son was never discussed. It was the only way I’d agree to any of it. Then I saw that news reel, and I knew what I had to do.”
Noah heard the words, and he knew his father was baiting him. Wanting him to discuss the idea of Angel where people were potentially listening.
It wasn't going to happen.
Ziggy glanced up and caught his gaze. She tilted her head a little to the left, narrowing her stare.
She’d liked Hugh. Thought he was smart. Admired the way he attacked a story.
Ziggy hated being wrong about people, and it was rare that she was, but the look on her face told him either she didn’t believe his dad, or she was kicking herself for not seeing this one coming.
For half a second, Noah thought about asking his father how he got his personal cell, but then that lie would be on record, and Noah wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
"You can make a public statement," Noah said. “Tell everyone that’s not what you agreed to. I’m sure my people would make it go away, and the interview won’t take place. You don’t need me to do that.”
His father didn't answer right away. In the room, nobody moved—not even Ziggy with her pen.
"I've had a great deal of time to think," Matias said finally. "Twenty-five years to be exact. I'm not the same man I used to be.”
Serial killers didn’t change. If Matias Salazar were ever let out of prison, even at his age, he’d kill again. Or he’d die trying. That was a fact that Noah had lived with his entire adult life.
“I want to be careful about how I say that because I know how it sounds. It's not about finding God—I've always believed. God has always been a part of my life ever since I was a little boy. That might be hard for some to understand, but it’s the truth.”
Noah had heard this speech before, and it made him physically sick—especially since as a kid, he and his parents had gone to church every Sunday. It was one of the many reasons he didn’t go now.
“It's about accepting who I am, what I've done. About honestly and openly taking ownership. Maybe that’s cliché, I don’t know, but I’ve sat in silence with what I’ve done for too long.”
What I've done.
Those words rolled through in Noah’s head like waves crash into the shoreline.
His father going to prison had never been the complicated part. He’d committed twelve murders and deserved every year of every sentence handed down in that courtroom, and Noah had never once in his life questioned that—not even at fourteen.
It was the other thing that didn't have a name.
The unnamed piece that existed alongside the simple truth and refused to be argued out of existence, no matter how many years Noah put between himself and it.
It was the truth that Noah had honestly felt loved by his father.
It had been a genuine, active love. The kind built of days, weeks, and years of the unremarkable ways that added up over a childhood, shaping him into the person he carried into adulthood, whether he wanted to or not.
His father had shown up. Consistently. Without being asked. At thirty-nine, standing in someone else's living room, the weight of that tore at Noah's heart. Having a present father wasn't something every person had. It was, in fact, something many people spent their whole lives without.
But his father was also a monster.
Both things lived in Noah. They had always lived in him. And the cruelty of it was that accepting both didn't make either one smaller.
"Why did you call?" Noah asked. "What do you actually want from me?"
"You're the truth-seeker." The warmth again. Steady. Patient. Like it had been sitting there the whole time waiting for him to come back to it. "Bring this reporter on your show. Expose what he's doing.”
Noah saw its shape the second it landed—the architecture underneath the ask.
Ziggy must have seen it too, because her pen was flying across the page. Troy had pushed himself to a standing position, but Jag hadn’t moved a muscle. Amazing how that man could be so still, and yet so massively present.
"I can't bring a reporter from my own station onto my show," Noah said. "That's not something I would mention, it would be unethical. You want to deny the interview and make a statement. You don't need cameras. You don't need me."
Silence on the other end. Even as a boy, his father had taken his time to make important statements.
Noah did it, too. Sadly, it was a trait he’d learned from his dad.
It was two-fold. Think before you speak, especially important words.
Understand what’s coming so there are no surprises.
But the other part of that, the part that Noah kind of hated himself for, was the calculated part.
The part he used on the show to get the confessions. To get the truth. To get to the story.
This was what his father was doing.
But Noah could be patient. So, he waited. He listened to his heartbeat, and he waited.
"I'm going to be seventy soon," Matias said. The warmth had shifted into something more deliberate. "I'm going to die in this prison. I've made my peace with that. But before I do, I want to tell my story. I want to tell it on your show."
"No."
"I think if you—"
“I’m sorry, but the answer is no,” Noah said in the voice he used on air when a guest tried to redirect an interview, and he had no intention of following. "That's not the kind of story I do. You told your truth when you confessed. That story is finished."
“Why don’t you come to the prison and have a chat with me?” The patience in his voice hadn't shifted an inch. "Hear what I have to say in person. You might think differently when we're in the same room."
Noah opened his mouth but never got the chance to respond.
"My time is up. I hope to see you soon.” The line went flat.