Chapter 14: Ghosts of the Past
The temperature in Carter's Roadhouse seemed to drop ten degrees. Ethan looked between Jack and Caleb, his mind racing.
"What are you talking about?" Ethan demanded, his voice tight. "The police report said my father's crash was an accident. A flash flood on a dangerous stretch of highway."
Caleb let out a harsh, dry laugh. "Police reports are written by men who get paid to look the other way, kid. Your father didn't just drive off that bridge. He was forced off."
Jack's jaw tightened so hard a muscle twitched violently. "Prove it."
Caleb reached inside his canvas jacket and slid a heavy, yellowed manila envelope across the table. It was stamped with military classification markers and faded departmental seals that hadn't seen the light of day in two decades.
"I was working deep undercover intelligence before I joined up with you and Benjamin," Caleb explained, leaning forward. "Your father stumbled onto a massive illegal smuggling and land-fraud operation running through this exact county. Marcus Vance was just a small-time player back then; the real muscle came from a syndicate that wanted this entire valley cleared out for industrial development."
Ethan pulled the envelope toward him and opened it. Inside were old photographs, forensic collision reconstruction notes that contradicted the official police report, and a transcript of an intercepted radio dispatch from the night of the crash.
"They cut the brake lines on Benjamin's truck," Caleb said softly, his eyes fixed on the grain of the wooden table. "I found out too late. By the time I reached the bridge, the car was already underwater, and you were gone. I went underground because the syndicate put a bounty on anyone connected to Benjamin Brooks. I stayed hidden for twenty years... until I heard that Marcus Vance had been taken down by a kid named Ethan Brooks."
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Jack stared at the documents, his chest heaving with suppressed fury. "All these years... I blamed myself for not riding with him that night. And it was murder."
"It was murder," Caleb confirmed. "And Vance's arrest was just the tip of the iceberg. The syndicate that backed him twenty years ago? They're still out there. And they just realized that Benjamin Brooks's son didn't die in that river."
