Sandra promised to verify the records before publication and asked for seventy-two hours to check what she could. Nolan felt unexpectedly relieved that she wasn't rushing. People had been making hurried decisions about Elias Vance for twenty-two years, and few of those decisions had ended well. Over the next several days, the investigation moved forward in ways Nolan could not see directly. Witness statements were taken, Ruth's archival notes were reviewed, and the potential legal remedies available to affected families began to emerge. The story was becoming broader than one man's disappearance, just as Elias had intended.
Garrett Cole agreed, through his own attorney, to meet investigators and explain what he remembered about the fundraiser account and his payment from Pike. Boon provided the club's old ledgers and his own statement about the unusual entries. Silas did the same, including the years in which he had suspected betrayal but failed to investigate vigorously enough. Marcus Webb remained missing. A review of old garage records showed inconsistencies in the address and references he had supplied when hired, and a phone number associated with one of his emergency contacts led to a disconnected office leased through a Pike-affiliated company. The findings made his presence in Nolan's life look less accidental, but investigators still needed to establish exactly what he had been told to do.
Nolan thought about the dinners Marcus had cooked, the football games they'd watched, and the way Marcus had once helped him push a broken truck out of traffic without being asked. He discovered he could feel both gratitude and anger without either canceling the other. Betrayal did not make every shared moment imaginary, but it changed what those moments meant.
On the fourth day after Pike gave him the address, Reyes called. "The man is real," he said. "Daniel Cross is the name he uses. He's been operating a small repair shop in Marrow's Gap for years. Frances has seen a photograph that matches the man you showed Silas, and a private source confirms he was there recently."
Nolan sat down. He had prepared himself for any answer except the one he wanted, afraid that wanting it would make him foolish. Now the answer was possible and specific enough to require action.
"Does he know I'm coming?" Nolan asked.
"Not unless someone else told him. We haven't contacted him directly."
"Good," Nolan said, surprising himself. "I need to be the one to knock on that door."
He drove to the clubhouse that afternoon. The place had returned to its ordinary rhythm: two men working on motorcycles in the garage, a card game at the long table, and coffee brewing on a hot plate. The urgency of the past few nights had left marks on the men but had not swallowed their daily routines. Silas was writing in a ledger when Nolan entered. He closed the book at once, and they sat across from each other without speaking for a while. The cassette player rested on the table between them, a piece of aging plastic that had become the center of Nolan's world.
"When are you going?" Silas asked.
"Tomorrow. Before dawn."
"Want someone to come with you?"
Nolan thought of a convoy appearing outside a garage in a town where no one knew the story. His father had spent twenty-two years keeping his identity small; arriving with the Iron Ravens would turn his first meeting with his son into a public spectacle. It belonged to the two of them before it belonged to anyone else.