TEN FEET AWAY

Ethan turned to the security monitor.

He moved the recording backward until the clock read 6:45, then stopped it on a woman beside the water display.

Her hair was pinned beneath a store cap. She wore a blue apron and carried a cardboard carton against one hip.

Noah knew her before Ethan enlarged the picture.

Not from memory alone. From the photograph in his bedroom, the one where she was laughing with her eyes almost closed because he had dropped ice cream on her shoe.

His mother turned toward the camera.

She was alive.

On the screen, a little boy in a green sweatshirt walked past her.

Noah watched himself.

The woman put down her carton and touched his shoulder. He had forgotten that. She had said, "Careful, sweetheart," and guided him away from a broken display corner toward the water.

Then she had looked over his head at the entrance.

The video continued. She stepped behind the shelves.

The two gunmen came in.

"Go back," Noah said.

Ethan did.

"Stop."

His mother stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder.

Ten feet from the checkout. Near enough that he could have reached up and taken her hand.

"Did she know it was me?"

Nobody answered quickly enough.

"Dad."

"Yes."

Noah stared at the paused picture.

She had looked tired. That was what he remembered about the lady in the apron. There had been a little white scar above her eyebrow. He had thought she was somebody's grandmother, although she wasn't old. He simply hadn't looked.

"Play it again."

Brooks pulled a chair toward him. He didn't sit.

They watched his mother leave him three times.

On the fourth, Ethan stopped the recording himself.

"That's enough for now."

"You don't get to say that."

Ethan took his hand off the mouse.

Brooks' radio murmured. She turned it down.

"We're checking the staff exits," she told Noah. "We don't know where she is yet."

"You knew?" he asked his father.

"Not that she was here."

"That she wasn't dead."

Ethan sat on the edge of Alan's desk. For a moment he looked too tired to hold himself upright.

"Six months ago, someone from the lab contacted me. About the fire. He said the identification had been changed. Your mother's name had been put on a report that didn't belong to her."

Noah remembered the fire mostly through other people's voices. He had been four. His father had lifted him out of bed, and later Grandma had come with a suitcase. There had been a long time when nobody cooked anything except toast.

"Did you look for her?"

"Yes."

"For six months?"

"For six years. I thought I was looking for the men who killed her. Then I found out I might be looking for her too."

"So you died."

His father looked at him.

"Someone tried to kill me. The car did explode. I wasn't in it when it happened. A few people knew. We let everyone else believe—"

"Everyone else."

Ethan stopped.

Noah could hear an ambulance outside. A cart wheel squeaked somewhere beyond the offices, absurdly ordinary.

"I sent you to Rachel because I didn't know who was giving information to Voss."

"You sent me to Rachel before that. For a weekend."

"Yes."

"You said we'd go fishing when you got back."

Ethan rubbed his palms together.

"I did."

Noah pulled out the emergency phone. The screen was smeared with oil.

"You sent me this."

He opened the photograph of the toolbox.

His father leaned closer.

"That was me. Brooks helped me send it. We had a secure window. Then we lost it."

"I thought you changed your mind."

"About what?"

"Coming back."

Ethan looked down at the desk. One of his hands had begun to tremble.

"How did he know me?" Noah asked. "From the scar?"

Ethan looked toward the door through which Derek had been taken.

"He forced our car off the road four years ago. You were in the back. He got close enough to see you before another driver stopped to help."

Noah touched the skin behind his ear. Rain and glass. His father carrying him.

"You said it was an accident."

"I did."

Noah lowered his hand.

Brooks put a paper cup of water beside Noah.

"We need to look at the phone from the safe," she said gently. "Would you like to stay while we do?"

Noah nodded.

The recording was saved beneath a date from that morning. Brooks played it on the desk between them.

A woman's voice filled the little office.

"Ethan. If this reaches you, Haven is compromised. I moved the original. Your people will get the copies through the outside contact, but I can't use the old channel anymore. Someone is reading it."

A pause. A sound like a door closing.

"Keep Noah away from this place. Please. Whatever message you receive, don't bring him here."

Noah's fingers tightened around his own phone.

His mother sounded different from the old home videos. Lower. She seemed to be speaking with her teeth almost together, trying not to be heard.

"I saw Victor's driver at the loading dock. I think he knows. I have to go."

The recording ended.

Ethan reached for Noah's phone.

"What message brought you here?"

Noah hesitated.

At four o'clock, it had seemed like the most important secret in the world. He had been afraid that if he told Rachel, she would call someone, and whoever had brought his father back would take him away again.

Now it looked small and ugly on the screen.

Your father is alive. If you want to know why he left, come to Haven Market at 6:30. Use the place he showed you if you're followed. Don't tell anyone yet, champ.

Ethan read it twice.

"I didn't send this."

"I know."

Brooks pulled up a chair beside him.

"Did you see anybody following you?"

"A gray car outside school. Same one by the bus stop. I thought it was the man in Dad's picture, but I couldn't see properly."

"Voss?"

"Maybe. I don't know now."

"It's all right not to know."

She asked about the route. Noah told her. She asked whether anyone knew about the emergency meeting place.

His father said, "Rachel. And—"

He stopped.

Noah looked at the last word of the message.

Champ.

Ethan never called him that. He called him buddy, or Noah James when he was angry.

Someone else called him champ at birthdays. At Christmas. Over the phone on the night his father died.

Someone who had picked up Noah's dropped fork and said, You need to eat something, champ.

Noah pushed the phone across the desk.

"Uncle Victor calls me that."