“All right, I'll see you when you get back,” he says.
I hang up without even knowing if I said goodbye or not. My next call is to Sam.
“You're going back to Sherwood tomorrow, right?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, sounding confused. “Is everything okay?”
“I'm going with you. But can we leave today?” I asked.
“Emma, what's going on?”
“I need to go back to DC. I have to go by headquarters and the police department, then I need to go back to Sherwood for a couple of days. A potentially important piece of evidence from Greg's case slipped through the cracks, and I have to find it. Especially now that I know Lydia was in touch with him because of something having to do with the Dragon. I need to figure this out,” I say.
“Let me finish up what I'm doing right now, then I'll come back to the hotel and get packed. We can leave as soon as you want to,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He hangs up, and I toss my phone to the bed so I can finish packing up. By the time he gets to the hotel an hour and a half later, I've already stacked clothes for him on the bed and have packed up his toiletries. Which he promptly unpacks so he can take a shower to wash the cornfield off him. Fortunately, he is the quintessential male when it comes to showering and is out, dressed, and ready to go within fifteen minutes.
We hit the road for the few hours it will take to get to the DC area. I call my father on the way. After the long day and a long drive, we'll want to stay the night with him before heading to Sherwood tomorrow.
Chapter Six
It was good to see my father and spend a little time with him. Even if it was just one night. It's been a while since we had a visit of any real length. I've been so wrapped up in everything going on in Harlan, and he has been doing his own investigations, sending us in opposite directions a good bit of the time.
But in a lot of ways, that feels normal. Growing up, I was never sure if I was going to wake up in the morning to both of my parents still in the house like they were when I went to bed. For a while there, I couldn't even be sure I was going to wake up in the same house where I went to bed.
They were always traveling, always going off to work on something I didn't know about. It wasn't until I was older that I understood how important my father's work was. His role in the CIA influenced him to ensure I trained in martial arts from the time I was old enough to kick and not fall over. It kept his eyes sharp, his awareness precise, and his family always moving.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I actually understood why my mother would sometimes leave. As far as I knew when I was young, she didn't work like my father did. She stayed at home with me. Occasionally, she left and would be gone for a few days, but I never questioned it. They never let me feel fear or worry, so I also didn't feel the need to know where she was.
Not until she died. It took another seventeen years for me to uncover the truth. To find out what an amazing woman she actually was, and about all the lives she saved without my ever even knowing it. By then, I had been without my father for a decade. Now that he's back in my life, it's wonderful just to have the option to go see him when I can.
It felt good to settle into my old room, in the house I lived in by myself from the time I was eighteen until he came back. We talked over breakfast, but I didn't venture too far into everything we had been investigating. I didn't want my entire relationship with him to be about work.
Now that I'm back in Sherwood, I kind of wish I had taken that opportunity to see if he had any insights or ideas. I'm sitting in the living room of what was my grandparents’ house, but that is now my home. The key I picked up from the police department, after we found it in a little-used corner of the evidence room, flips over and over in my palm as I try to figure out why Greg would have given it to Lydia to give to me.
He didn't tell her what it was for, or why I needed to have it.
It doesn't look like a house key. I wouldn't need it anyway. I've already emptied out Greg’s apartment and sold it. All the personal papers his lawyer gave me after the will was probated are spread out on the table in front of me. I’ve dug through them several times, looking to see if I might have missed a deed or a description of another piece of property.
There is nothing. I don't have any notes, any mysterious letters. No treasure map. There's nothing that gives me any indication of what this key belongs to.
For a brief moment, I wonder if it could have anything to do with the bombing at the bus station when he was still in Jonah's grasp. At the time, nobody knew where he was or what had happened to him. He had been missing for over a year, only to resurface on surveillance footage walking through a bus station in Richmond. He was seen going to the back of the station near the lockers, then walking over to the information desk, then leaving seconds before the entire building exploded.
But the key doesn't look like it fits a locker. And it wouldn't make sense for
