PART 2 — THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED
“Dear God.”
Those two words came out of Marcus Cole’s mouth so quietly that I almost missed them.
But the expression on his face frightened me more than anything the computer had shown.
He looked like a man who had just seen a ghost.
“Mr. Cole,” I said, “what exactly is happening?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he pulled a chair beside me and lowered his voice.
“Ethan, I need you to listen carefully. What I’m about to tell you may change everything you believe about your childhood.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then stop talking in circles.”
He glanced toward the security guard.
“Please clear this area. And nobody contacts the family listed on his application.”
That last sentence caught my attention.
“My family?”
Marcus turned back toward me.
“Is your mother still alive?”
“Yes. As far as I know.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“Fifteen years ago.”
His expression darkened.
“And your stepfather?”
“Same.”
He slowly removed his glasses.
“Ethan, the child whose Social Security number you’ve been using was officially declared dead in 1990. His father, Richard Miller, also died that year.”
I shook my head.
“No. My father died in 1997.”
“That’s what someone told you.”
The room went silent.
Marcus opened a locked database on the clerk’s computer.
He typed a security code, waited several seconds, and turned the monitor toward me.
A photograph appeared.
It showed a dark-haired man standing beside a blue pickup truck.
He held a little boy on his shoulders.
The photograph was old and grainy, but something about the man’s face made my chest ache.
“Richard Miller,” Marcus said.
I stared.
“That can’t be right.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s not my father.”
Marcus didn’t move.
I pointed at the screen.
“My father had brown hair. He wore glasses. He was taller than that.”
Marcus leaned back.
“Do you have any photographs of him?”
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
My mother had never kept family photographs where I could see them.
Whenever I asked, she said they were destroyed in a basement flood.
Marcus watched the realization cross my face.
“Ethan, how many times did you move as a child?”
“I don’t know. A few.”
“Do you remember where you lived before you turned six?”
A cold sensation traveled down my spine.
I could remember the yellow kitchen.
The smell of cinnamon.
A woman’s voice singing.
But I couldn’t remember a street.
A school.
A neighbor.
Not even the name of the town.
“I was a kid,” I said defensively.
Marcus nodded.
“Of course.”
Then he opened another file.
“This is a missing-child report from September 1994.”
A photograph appeared.
A smiling little boy wearing a red sweater stood in front of a Christmas tree.
He had dark hair.
Gray-green eyes.
And a small crescent-shaped birthmark beneath his left ear.
My hand went straight to my neck.
Marcus noticed.
“May I see?”
I slowly turned my head.
His breathing changed.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
He pointed to the screen.
“Look at the birthmark.”
The boy in the photograph had the same mark.
Same shape.
Same location.
Even the tiny darker spot near its edge.
I felt my heartbeat pounding in my throat.
“Lots of people have birthmarks.”
“Not exactly like that.”
Marcus enlarged the photograph.
Then he read the name printed beneath it.
“Daniel Christopher Whitmore.”
I stared at him.
“Who?”
“Daniel Whitmore. Missing since September 17, 1994. He was abducted from outside his family’s home in Virginia.”
Something inside my head seemed to shift.
Virginia.
A white house.
A wooden swing.
A woman shouting my name.
Not Ethan.
Something else.
I pressed my palms against my temples.
“Stop.”
Marcus immediately leaned forward.
“Ethan?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop.”
My shoulder throbbed.
My vision blurred.
And suddenly I remembered something.
A blue car.
Rain against the windows.
Someone crying in the front seat.
A man’s voice saying, “He’ll forget. Give him time.”
I looked up.
“Gary.”
Marcus went completely still.
“What did you say?”
“My stepfather. Gary Dawson.”
Marcus typed the name.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then a new document appeared.
His face drained of color.
He turned the screen away, but I had already seen enough.
Gary Dawson.
Former private security contractor.
Questioned in connection with the Whitmore disappearance.
Investigation suspended in 1998.
I stood so quickly that my chair scraped across the floor.
“He knew?”
Marcus looked at me.
“Ethan, we don’t know that yet.”
“He threw me out because I wasn’t his blood.”
My voice broke.
“He said those words like he hated me.”
Marcus swallowed.
“Maybe he was afraid of what you might eventually remember.”
I felt sick.
For fifteen years, I had believed my stepfather threw me away because I wasn’t worth keeping.
But what if he had thrown me out because keeping me was becoming dangerous?
Marcus reached for his phone.
“I need to contact a federal investigator who worked on this case.”
I grabbed his wrist.
“Wait.”
He looked at me.
“My mother.”
“What about her?”
I barely managed to speak.
“Was she involved?”
Marcus hesitated.
That hesitation told me more than his words.
Then he opened another photograph.
This one showed two people standing outside a courthouse in 1995.
A man.
And a woman.
The man was Gary Dawson.
The woman was my mother.
Carol Miller.
Except the name beneath her photograph wasn’t Carol Miller.
It was Margaret Hayes.
And beneath her name were three words that made my stomach turn.
PERSON OF INTEREST.
I stared at the photograph until the faces blurred.
“That’s my mother.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“Ethan, there is something else.”
He opened another document.
“A witness reported seeing Daniel Whitmore leave with a woman on the day he disappeared.”
I looked up.
“What woman?”
Marcus took a breath.
“Someone the boy trusted.”
My hands began shaking.
“Who?”
He turned the monitor toward me.
The witness statement contained one sentence highlighted in yellow.
The child called the woman Mommy.
I couldn’t breathe.
Then Marcus clicked on the next page.
And there it was.
A photograph of a beautiful woman standing beside a young boy.
The woman looked nothing like Carol Miller.
But the boy looked exactly like me.
Marcus pointed toward her name.
“Ethan, this woman is Daniel Whitmore’s biological mother.”
I stared at the screen.
“Where is she now?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Instead, he studied the newest information appearing on his computer.
His eyes widened.
Then he whispered something that sent ice through my veins.
“She’s alive.”
I gripped the desk.
“Then why hasn’t she found me?”
Marcus slowly looked up.
“Because, according to this case file, she has spent the last thirty-two years believing her son was murdered.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“By whom?”
Marcus opened one final document.
And there, staring back at me from an old police photograph, was the man who had raised me.
Gary Dawson.
But it wasn’t his name that made Marcus go pale.
It was the red warning beneath his photograph.
SUSPECT STATUS: ACTIVE. CURRENT LOCATION UNKNOWN.
Then my phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
One text message.
“Ethan, whatever they tell you, don’t believe them. Your mother and I did what we had to do to keep you alive. If you want the truth, come alone.”
I stared at the message.
Fifteen years without a single word from Gary Dawson.
And somehow, within minutes of discovering my past, he knew exactly where I was.
Then a second message appeared.
“And whatever you do, don’t trust Marcus Cole. Ask him what happened to the first boy they found.”
I slowly raised my eyes toward Marcus.
He was watching me.
And for the first time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
On his desk sat an old photograph of a little boy.
The same boy from the missing-child report.
Marcus followed my gaze.
Then he reached across the desk and turned the photograph facedown.
“Ethan,” he said quietly, “who just contacted you?”
I tightened my grip around my phone.
Because suddenly I wasn’t sure which man was telling the truth.
And I was beginning to understand that finding out who I really was might be far more dangerous than never knowing at all….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
