“Eli. Work bay.”
“I want to know what’s happening.”
“Work bay.”
He held her gaze for a second.
Then he left.
He did not go all the way to the work bay.
He stopped in the narrow outdoor passage between the buildings and stood in the cold where the wall muffled words but not voices. Raina spoke first. Hargrove answered. Doyle interrupted. The conversation dropped lower. Then Hargrove’s voice rose once, sharp enough to cross the wall without carrying clear language.
Eli stood with his hands in his pockets and watched his breath cloud.
He did not need the exact words.
He knew.
Maybe he had known from the first morning at the gate. From the fractional silence when he said Caleb Mercer. From the memorial strip on the vest. From the way Raina always used the phrase your father as if it carried a weight that had already stopped moving.
His father was dead.
The realization did not arrive dramatically. There was no single break inside him. It was more like a foundation settling after years of holding weight at the wrong angle.
For four years the question had been where is he?
Now the question was when did he die, and why did nobody tell me?
The door opened.
Raina stepped into the passage.
She stopped when she saw him.
“He’s dead,” Eli said.
Raina did not lie.
“Yes.”
The word went through him cleanly.
“When?”
“About eight months after he left you. Three and a half years ago.”
Eli looked at the gravel between them.
“How?”
Raina inhaled slowly.
“That’s connected to everything else. Why he left. What he did for us. Why his name is carried here.”
“Tell me.”
“Eli—”
“Tell me.”
The levelness in his voice had changed. Raina heard it.
She stepped closer, not touching him.
“Your father didn’t leave because he wanted another life. He was protecting someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone connected to this club. People outside the club were searching for that person. Caleb discovered enough to know they were close.”
“What did he do?”
“He made them believe he had what they wanted. He pulled their attention away from this county, away from the person they were looking for, away from us.”
Eli’s mouth felt dry.
“He made himself the target.”
“Yes.”
“And they found him.”
Raina was silent just long enough to answer before she spoke.
“Yes.”
“Who killed him?”
“That part is larger than what I can explain in five minutes. Some of the people involved are gone. Some aren’t. What I can tell you is that what Caleb did gave us time to get the person he was protecting somewhere safe.”
“Are they safe now?”
“They have been for three years.”
Eli closed his eyes once.
“He knew,” he said.
Raina waited.
“When he told me to find you. He already knew something could happen.”
“I think he did.”
“He wasn’t preparing me for him leaving.”