Chapter 6 - ELEANOR’S LAST SECRET
Eleanor had died nine years earlier without telling Arthur that Michael survived.
The photograph was dated by a newspaper visible on the table. Michael’s burns were bandaged. Eleanor held his hand and looked directly at the camera.
Rex also found a sealed letter addressed to him.
He brought both to his mother.
Elaine Dalton lived in a small rental outside Joliet and had not spoken to Thomas since his disappearance. When she saw the photograph, she sat down hard.
She admitted Eleanor visited her after the fire. Michael was alive but believed Wade and Agent Voss controlled people inside Silver Hawk and local law enforcement. Eleanor helped move him to a private rehabilitation clinic under an assumed name.
“Why keep Arthur in the dark?” Rex demanded.
“Michael thought Arthur had approved the hidden freight payments during the club’s early years.”
Arthur had approved cash from freight companies—but only as legal sponsorships. Wade apparently used those authorizations to conceal later payments.
Eleanor feared Arthur would confront Wade before Michael could gather proof.
The secret broke more than a marriage retroactively. It revealed a family that had loved one another while trusting everyone else with fragments of the truth.
Rex opened Michael’s letter.
Rex, if you find this, your father either failed or died trying. Do not inherit his guilt before you know what belongs to him.
The letter listed three clinic aliases and instructed Rex to locate “the girl with the hawk tattoo.”
Elaine knew the girl: Michael’s nurse, Sarah Vale.
Sarah had vanished from nursing records sixteen years earlier.
Wade’s lawyers learned Rex accessed the locker. They demanded every item under the legal-services agreement he had signed.
Rex refused.
Hours later, police searched Elaine’s house using a warrant based on an anonymous report of stolen Silver Hawk property. The photograph and letter were gone.
The brass key remained in Rex’s pocket.
On its wax wrapping, he noticed a number written in Eleanor’s hand.
May you like
It was not a locker number.
It was a patient file.
