41. Felicity
FELICITY
“He was collecting evidence.”
The words hollowed out the entire room.
Rain hammered the broken bedroom window while everybody stared at Ava in stunned silence.
I felt sick suddenly.
Cold all over.
“My father?” I whispered.
Ava nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
“No,” I breathed instantly. “Dad wasn’t— he wasn’t some investigator.”
“You don’t have to be an investigator to get scared,” Ava said quietly.
That hit hard.
Because she was right.
Dad wasn’t trained for this world.
He was just a man who realized dangerous people were watching his daughter.
And apparently?—
he started watching back.
Wolf crouched beside the photographs again.
“You think he figured out Mercer’s people were dirty?”
Ava exhaled slowly.
“I think he figured out someone inside was feeding information out.”
Trigger frowned.
“So what exactly was he collecting?”
Ava looked toward the empty section of the box.
“Names.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Sharp.
Cold settled in my chest.
“No…”
Hersh moved closer beside me instantly.
Solid warmth against my side.
Grounding me before I completely spiraled.
Ava continued carefully.
“Your father probably started writing things down once he realized the same people kept appearing around the house.”
The memories came rushing back now.
Dad sitting silently at the kitchen table late at night.
Writing in small notebooks.
Closing them whenever I walked in.
Oh my God.
“He had notebooks,” I whispered.
Every head turned toward me immediately.
“What kind?” Wolf asked.
“I don’t know.” My pulse started pounding harder. “Small black ones. He carried one everywhere.”
Trigger’s expression darkened.
“And where are those notebooks now?”
I stared at the empty space in the box.
And knew.
Gone.
Whoever came tonight wasn’t after the letters.
They were after Dad’s evidence.
Lightning exploded outside.
Thunder shook the house hard enough to rattle the closet door.
And suddenly Hersh went still beside me.
Not normal still.
The dangerous kind.
“What?” Wolf asked immediately.
Hersh’s eyes moved slowly toward the hallway.
“He wasn’t searching.”
Every instinct inside me tightened instantly.
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
Hersh walked toward the ripped-up floorboards slowly.
Studying them.
Then the closet.
Then the scattered letters.
“He knew exactly where the box was.”
The room went dead silent.
Because he was right.
The floorboards weren’t destroyed randomly.
Only one section had been opened.
Clean.
Fast.
Precise.
Whoever broke in tonight came directly to this room.
Directly to the hiding place.
Like they’d been told exactly where to look.
Wolf’s voice dropped lower.
“Someone talked.”
Fear slid straight down my spine.
Not just fear.
Violation.
Because suddenly this house didn’t feel abandoned anymore.
It felt hunted.
Ava looked genuinely shaken now.
“Mercer shouldn’t have known about the evidence.”
Trigger barked a humorless laugh.
“Well, apparently Mercer knows EVERYTHING.”
Then—
headlights swept across the broken bedroom wall.
Everybody froze instantly.
A vehicle.
Outside.
Coming up the driveway.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And Hersh’s voice turned ice cold.
“We’ve got company.”