After the service, he came straight to me.
“Mr. Hayes?” he asked, offering a manicured hand. “Martin O’Connell. I was Patrick’s manager at the Town Herald.”
I thanked him, surprised he’d come at all. “He was very dedicated.”
Martin hesitated, then leaned closer and lowered his voice.
“Alistair… Patrick never actually worked for the Town Herald.”
My stomach clenched. “What are you saying? I saw him leave every morning. He got a weekly check.”
“Yes. An expense allowance. I wrote it myself,” Martin said. “The paperboy routine—the bike, the early mornings—was a cover. For twenty years.”
He pressed a heavy business card into my palm. No company name. No logo. Just a phone number and two initials: C.B.
“He asked me to give you this after the funeral,” Martin continued. “In case you ever needed answers.”
“Answers to what?” I asked.
“To who Patrick really was.”
I drove home in a haze, the card burning in my pocket. The house felt hollow without him. My mother had died years earlier. Now it was just me—and questions I’d never thought to ask.
The next morning, I called the number.
“C.B.,” a calm voice answered.
“My name is Alistair Hayes,” I said. “My stepfather… Patrick Hayes.”
There was a pause. Then the voice softened.
“Please come in. He was… a legend here.”
The office was tucked inside an ordinary downtown building, easy to overlook. Inside, the security was anything but ordinary. I was escorted to a conference room, where a woman named Catherine was waiting.
She didn’t waste time.
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