Page 107 of Intrepid

I threw out my legs, stopping the chair, and flipped my eyes open to break from the visual. A shudder beat down my spine at the thought of him holding me over his knee, as he once had. My lungs felt as if they might shrivel in my chest, the way I cringed at the sounds he’d made in his throat the whole time.

I lifted my gaze, searching for distraction, and found it in a book set on his bookshelf.

To the naked eye, the leather-bound cover blended seamlessly into his impressive collection of reference books stacked at either side. Shelves upon shelves of books that lined the wall behind his desk.

No, it wasn’t the book itself that snagged my attention, but the title of it.

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.

My father once told me that fairytales were for those who couldn’t bear to face reality. Seeing the book on his shelf struck me as odd, since he’d never read me those books as a child and had refused to keep them in his library.

I slid the book from its tight fit as far as it’d pull. Grasping the thick spine, I tugged again, but the damn thing felt like it’d been welded into place. Scratching my head, I studied the leather spine of it, running my finger over the worn skin, until I reached the base, where my finger dipped slightly. I rubbed the hollow there, and a small flap lifted away, exposing what appeared to be a circular lock of some sort.

What the hell?

Spinning on my heel, I nabbed one of the pens from a cup on the desk, and made the foolish attempt to pick it, as if I had any clue how to pick a damned lock. Rifling through the drawers one more time failed to produce a key. Even if the ledger wasn’t in the book, something important must’ve been.

I stared down at the silver lock and a thought pinged through me. Shoving my hand down inside my shirt, I pulled the delicate chain from inside and held the oversized lock charm in front of me. I’d only worn the damned thing in the horrific event I’d run into my father. I twisted each ring on the lock to spell out the word, trust, separating the tubular-shaped key from the dials, and unfastened it from my neck, letting the chain dangle as I held it up. My reflection stared back in the polished silver, and I pushed the key into the lock, breathing excitement when it popped.

I’d had the key the whole time. Go figure.

Gears hummed. My eyes went wide, and I took a step back.

The entire bookshelf slid to the side, all the books stacked there nothing but a guise, opening onto what appeared to be the innards of a safe. Not that I ventured into my father’s office much, but in the years I’d lived with him, I’d never seen that.

Waiting for the wall to silence again, I stepped forward and examined the inside.

A stack of papers sat before me, and I lifted the one on top, opening it to find a spatter of what looked like bloodstains and letters glued to the page that read: Gideon sends his regards. Folding it up, I fished through other papers and found a driver’s license.

One look at the face, and I dropped it back into the box with a gasp. The kid who’d kidnapped me back when I was fifteen. Why did my father have his license?

Another paper appeared to be a birth certificate, the name on which matched the one on the license. My eyes scanned down to the mother—a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, listed as age seventeen. The father was Karl Kutscher.

A creeping cold branched through my veins, tightening my lungs as I stared down at the page. The date of birth was three years before mine.

A memory struck me just then, something my kidnapper had said that night, seconds before taking his life in front of me. It hadn’t made any sense to me at the time, but as I stared down at the page, it became crystal clear.

“This is what happens to the throwaways.”

I stared down at his name again. Shawn Michael Kutscher. My half-brother.

Clutching my stomach, I tried to remember the circumstances of his case, what little my father told me, as well as what I’d gathered on my own afterward. His father had been accused of molesting him for years, but my father managed to get the charges reduced, significantly cutting his prison time.

I weeded through the papers to another birth certificate, nearly identical to the first, except the father had been listed as a Frank Robinson, and Shawn’s name changed to Shawn Michael Robinson.

He’d doctored the birth certificate.

A paralyzing realization settled over me—my father really did have the power to erase someone’s entire life.

Urgency beat down my back, and I abandoned my investigation and patted around for the reason I was there to begin. So I could get the hell out and process all this shit.

Finally, I found the ledger and stuffed it into my pocket. Beneath it was the sheet that held twenty-four words, just as Ty had detailed, which I folded and slid in beside the ledger.

After stacking everything as it’d been before, I stood before the Pinocchio book again. Turning the key inside the lock the opposite way from before sent the shelf sliding back into place, like it’d never even moved. I pushed the book back into its tight fit and quickly shuffled out of the office, flipping off the light as I exited.

Through the foyer, I made my way to the entrance, and the moment I threw back the door, a light slammed into my eyeballs, rendering me momentarily blind.

“Ma’am? May I ask what you’re doing here?” The light lowered, showing me a police officer standing on the front porch, holding a flashlight in my face.