EPILOGUE
CONNOR
I guide the motorboat to the middle of the Susquehanna River, miles away from Burnville, and dump the gun. It’s unlicensed. No record. In this part of the river, it will be carried much farther, eventually buried in the riverbed. It got the job done.
For weeks, I’ve been staying at a rental cabin not far away from Burnville. I like these parts, the nature, clean air. Today was the funeral for the man who was my father. I couldn’t show up. Nor did I care. I sent flowers.
Most say, a father is a father, no matter the circumstances. That’s not how you look at it when your father is suspected of being involved in your mother’s drowning. At least, that’s my grandfather’s theory. He raised me. He used to be a sheriff. He hated my father’s guts.
I didn’t know much about my father until I was in my twenties, when I graduated from Harvard and moved to Silicon Valley. IT is helpful, including in tracking people.
“You’ve done well, I see,” said the man sitting across from me in a coffee shop one day.
A full head of dark hair, despite him being in his forties.
A charming smile. The sort of confidence that can be admirable if you don’t know his criminal record, domestic disputes, stalking, fraud, and credit card debt.
As well as all the women he would tell me about in the next months of our occasional meetings.
James Derek Sickler. Intelligent but no steady job. Charming but no family. Amiable, until he learned about my successful start-up, and then all he could talk about was my money.
I wasn’t interested in him but more in the women he’d been with. Months before that, I’d done a DNA test. My information wasn’t shared, but the national database came up with a close match—a half sister, Rika Oren, the daughter of Victoria Oren, née Snickett.
I asked James Sickler about her. He shrugged with an arrogant smile. “Maybe?”
Suddenly, the one he was interested in was Josie Boots, the internet sensation involved in an online scandal.
You see, my father had a thing for pretty women and money.
“I’m going to Burnville, Pennsylvania, to meet her,” he said one day. He was on a mission to be part of someone’s success.
He borrowed money from me to travel to Burnville. I followed him. After all, I wanted to see for myself what my half-siblings were like.
In Burnville, he disappeared. I spent the first few days getting to know people. I met Rika at the bar she worked at. Smart, levelheaded, confident. Criminal record—that must be our father’s genes.
I saw Josie Boots several times. Quiet, kind, talented—I watched the online videos of her singing and playing guitar.
When the news broke about the kidnapped woman and my father’s picture was all over the media, I knew something was off. James Derek Sickler was many things—a Tinder swindler, a freeloader, and a scammer—but a kidnapper wasn’t one of them.
One person made me suspicious, Mallory Blain.
So I followed her, stalked her, broke into her farmhouse when she wasn’t there—I guess I am my father’s son after all.
She wasn’t a victim, that was clear. And she had something to do with my father’s disappearance.
The tracking device on her car told me she had a lot going on.
Including transporting a body in her car and putting it in Josie’s.
So, my father was dead.
Was I sad? Not really. Was I angry? Yes. That psycho killed a man.
I followed her when she took Josie. I stayed outside the barn, listening to her insane story. Mallory Blain was a killer who ruined many lives. Killing my father? I didn’t fret much. But my mother? That just wouldn’t do.
Shooting Mallory Blain was an exercise in justice. Either I killed her, or she killed Josie Boots, and I was looking forward to getting to know my half sister. Still am.
There’s another thing on my agenda today, the most important yet. The way I look at it, it’s the only good thing that came from James Derek Sickler.
I pull out my phone.
I’ve done a lot of research and paid plenty of private investigators to track the people I’m about to send the email to. There might be more. Not everyone will respond, and that’s okay. However it plays out, I’m looking forward to what happens.
I put the recipients in the email: Rika, Josie, Devon, John, Leah, Caleb, Matt, Anne.
And then I write the first lines:
Hello, everyone.
You don’t know each other yet, but I hope that will change soon.
One day, I’d like to meet all of you.
My name is Connor, and I am the son of James Derek Sickler.
You might have never heard of him, but we all have one thing in common—
he is our biological father.