Page 115 of Long Gone

I couldn’t help the twinge of guilt that crept in. I’d done this. I’d given him a sleepless night and filled him with anxiety by dredging up the past again.

Maybe he regretted persuading me to come back to town. I’d done nothing but bring up memories he’d rather forget.

“Harper,” he half-whispered when he saw me. “I owe you an apology.”

I walked in and shut the door, the soft click filling the room. I used to love hearing that sound when I was a kid, because it had felt like a privilege to come here with Andi—for us to take part in our father’s separate world that excluded our mother. But now it sounded ominous.

I didn’t say a word as I lowered into one of the chairs in front of his desk, trying to hide a grimace from the pain that shot through my collarbone. Once I was seated, I studied him, not as my father but as someone who knew more than he should about a missing man who’d been murdered and then hidden in a shallow grave.

“I suppose you’re here to finish asking your questions,” he said softly. He placed his hands on his desk and then flinched, as though realizing the pose looked too formal, and put them back in his lap. A slight sheen from the sweat on his palms remained on the wood.

Still, I didn’t say anything.

He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, his chin quavering.

My father was about to cry.

The last time I’d seen him cry was when Chief Larson had shown up at our front door to tell us they’d found Andi’s broken body. Dad had sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until there was nothing left. He hadn’t cried at the funeral or any time after that I’d seen. It was like he’d climbed into his well of emotions and bled it dry, and when he’d emerged, he’d left part of his soul behind with his dead daughter, and what was left was too miniscule to be shared. I wasn’t the only one he’d abandoned. He’d abandoned the fun-loving father I’d known, leaving behind a shell that had continued plodding through life.

And now, that same man looked like he was about to break down in tears.

My heart froze. Oh. God.

“What did you do?” I asked quietly, my mind racing with what I was going to do if he confessed to murder.

“I got involved with some not-so-great people, Harper,” he said, his eyes shiny.

I took a moment to wrap my head around that. “Okay,” I finally said. “Are you still involved with them?”

He shook his head. “No, and what I did…”

“What did you do, Dad?”

He swallowed, looking terrified, and then said, “I worked on some projects for a man who turned out to be a criminal, but I didn’t know it at the time. He held it over my head.”

Criminal? Was he talking about James Malcolm?

Oh. God.

Was that why Malcolm was so interested in this case?

Had he been using me to get evidence on my father?

“It started after you left for college,” he continued, looking ten years older. “Some simple sales and lease contracts, and honestly, I was flattered.”

If he was talking about Malcolm, I was having trouble making the pieces fit. Why would Malcolm have hired my father over a decade ago, when he was embroiled in his own messes in Fenton County?

My father took a breath, then made an apologetic face. “He was a well-respected businessman, by everyone in the state. His father had been a senator, for God’s sake. I had no reason to guess what he was doing was illegal.”

“Who are you talking about, Dad?”

“J.R. Simmons.”

My brow shot up. I remembered news coming to light that one of the most influential men in the state had been arrested for multiple crimes, including murder, but then the headlines had petered out because he’d escaped police custody and then died in an explosion in Fenton County.

Fenton County.

My blood ran cold.

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