Elena looked at him.
"Who's inside?"
Michael's expression darkened.
"Someone who has been waiting twenty years to speak."
Then he added:
"And someone who knows which one of us betrayed the others."
Michael Reeves refused to enter the police station.
He said it was the first rule he had learned during his years investigating Black Lantern.
Never return to a place where your enemies know your name.
Instead, he took them to a small house near the edge of the city.
The house belonged to an elderly woman who had once worked as a nurse at a private medical facility.
Her name was Evelyn Carter.
She opened the door before they knocked.
"Michael."
He nodded.
"Evelyn."
She looked at Daniel.
Then she began to cry.
"You have your mother's eyes."
Daniel stood silently.
"Do you know my mother?"
Evelyn stepped aside.
"Come inside."
The living room was filled with old photographs.
One showed Sarah Whitmore holding a newborn baby.
Another showed Michael standing beside a hospital bed.
Daniel recognized the woman in the bed immediately.
It was the same woman from the photograph in his wallet.
Sarah.
"Where is she?" he asked.
Evelyn sat down.
"She was brought here twenty years ago."
"Was she alive?"
"Yes."
"Then what happened?"
Evelyn looked at Michael.
He nodded.
"Tell him."
Evelyn took a deep breath.
"Sarah was suffering from severe injuries. She had been held in an underground facility for several weeks. When she arrived, she was barely conscious."
Daniel's hands trembled.
"Did she ask about me?"
"Every day."
"Did she know I was alive?"
"Michael told her."
Daniel looked at his father.
Michael lowered his head.
"I promised I would bring you back to her."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because they were watching."
Daniel stepped away.
"You let me grow up believing she was dead."
"I was trying to protect you."
"From whom? My own mother?"
Michael didn't answer.
Elena approached Evelyn.
"Who was responsible for holding Sarah?"
The old nurse looked toward the photographs.
"A man named William Foster."
Elena remembered the name from Rachel's accusation.
"Where is he now?"
"Dead."
"When?"
"Three years ago."
Michael shook his head.
"That's what the records say."
Evelyn nodded.
"He died in the same facility where Sarah was held."
Daniel looked at her.
"Did you see the body?"
"No."
"Then how do you know?"
Evelyn walked toward a cabinet.
She opened a drawer and removed a small envelope.
Inside was a photograph of a woman standing beside a hospital bed.
The woman was Sarah.
But the date printed on the photograph was from six months earlier.
Daniel stared.
"She's alive."
Evelyn nodded.
"She escaped."
"Where did she go?"
"She left one message."
Evelyn handed him a piece of paper.
It contained a handwritten sentence.
Tell Daniel that I never stopped looking for him.
Daniel's eyes filled with tears.
Then he noticed something else.
A second line had been written beneath it.
And tell Elena that her mother was innocent.
Elena looked up sharply.
"What?"
Michael took the paper.
"Margaret never killed Charles Miller."
Elena's voice became cold.
"You told me she did."
"I repeated what I was told."
"By whom?"
Michael hesitated.
"By the man who controlled Black Lantern."
Elena stepped closer.
"Who?"
Michael looked toward the window.
"Someone who has been standing beside us this entire time."
Suddenly, the lights went out.
A crash came from the kitchen.
Elena drew her weapon.
"Stay down!"
A gunshot exploded.
Glass shattered.
Daniel pulled Evelyn to the floor.
Michael rushed toward the hallway.
"Don't move!"
But he was too late.
A figure in dark clothing appeared behind him.
There was a struggle.
Then a second gunshot.
Michael fell.
"DAD!"
Daniel rushed toward him.
Elena fired at the attacker.
The figure disappeared through the back door.
Rachel ran toward the entrance.
"Daniel, don't!"
But he was already kneeling beside his father.
Blood spread across Michael's shirt.
"Stay with me," Daniel whispered.
Michael struggled to breathe.
"Listen..."
Daniel leaned closer.
"Don't talk."
Michael grabbed his son's wrist.
"Room 07..."
"What?"
"The woman..."
Daniel shook his head.
"Which woman?"
Michael forced out his final words.
"She's not your mother."
His hand fell.
Daniel stared at him.
"No. No, Dad!"
Elena pressed her fingers against Michael's neck.
Nothing.
Michael Reeves was dead.
Then Elena noticed something beneath his body.
A small piece of paper.
She picked it up.
It contained a single name.
ELENA CROSS.
Underneath it was a sentence:
SHE WAS THE FIRST CHILD THEY TOOK.
Elena felt the room disappear around her.
The funeral was held three days later.
Only six people attended.
Daniel stood beside his father's grave, wearing the same black suit he had worn to his mother's funeral years earlier.
He hadn't cried.
Not once.
Elena stood several feet behind him.
She knew that silence.
It was the silence of someone who had lost too much to believe that grief could change anything.
When the ceremony ended, Daniel remained beside the grave.
Elena approached.
"Are you coming?"
He shook his head.
"I need a minute."
She nodded.
"I'll be in the car."
As she walked away, her phone vibrated.
An unknown number.