The hydraulic lock engaged behind him with a thud that vibrated through his bones.
Then the second door. Same sound. Same weight, and all of a sudden, Noah was a teenage boy again. He’d heard that sound so often during his nightmares that it felt like it had become his reality.
The corridor smelled like industrial cleaner and recycled air and underneath those, a tinge of blood. And beneath that, the accumulated years of rot, despair, and maybe even a hint of hope if someone dared to look for it. His father had been breathing this air for twenty-five years. Noah had walked out of it three times and it had taken weeks for the weight of it to leave him completely. He had no reason to think this time would be different.
The private visitors' room was at the end of the corridor. He sat at the table and looked at the door on the far side of the room. The last time he'd sat in this chair, he’d been twenty-nine and twelve years into building Noah Chase into something that held. His father had leaned across this table and said, “I'm proud of you.” Afterward, Noah had driven three hours home, wishing those words hadn’t meant anything.
But the truth was, they did. Not in the same way that most young men wanted their fathers to be proud. Noah had long ago lost that need. But no matter how long Noah tried, he couldn't erase the first fourteen years of his life.
Noah spent that entire weekend binge-watching shows about serial killers and how they form relationships and attachments. He’d read every book he could get his hands on regarding the subject. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done that. The one thing he’d learned was that his father honestly didn’thave true remorse for killing those women. And that Matias Salazar’s relationships with his family had been formed through manipulation, power, and control.
There was a bond there, but it wasn’t the same kind of bond other children had with their fathers. And even as an adult, that knowledge messed with Noah’s head and his heart.
The door on the other side of the room opened, and that tightening in Noah’s chest reminded him that there was nothing normal about this situation.
His father walked in, hands and feet in shackles, guard guiding him. Noah pulled in a slow breath through his nose and held himself still—broadcast stillness. Stillness he’d developed over years of sitting across from people who wanted something from him. He’d learned to give away nothing while he waited for the moment they gave away everything.
His father was sixty-eight years old. The silver had taken over his hair completely, and the lines in his face had deepened. He crossed the room, slightly favoring his right side. But his eyes were the same. Dark and steady, and they settled on Noah with the full weight of his attention—the look Noah had grown up believing was reserved for him alone. The look that had made him feel, for the first fourteen years of his life, like nothing bad could happen inside the radius of his father's awareness.
He knew what it had cost twelve women to believe the same thing.
He breathed in, then out, and kept his hands loose on the table.
His father sat down and smiled as the guard cuffed him to the table and stepped back toward the wall.
Noah had watched that smile work his entire childhood. Had watched teachers, neighbors, and the parents of his friends lean into it without realizing they were doing so. Had felt it work on himself more times than he could count, remembering the wayit had bypassed everything. Now, he noticed it as if it were a technique he'd cataloged and studied. He wasn’t immune to it—he'd stopped pretending that years ago—but he was aware of it.
"Thank you for coming," his father said.
"Don't thank me,” Noah said.
His father's eyes moved from Noah's hands where they on the table to his face. His smile held as the cold, wet blanket of understanding settled over Noah. He hadn’t realized before until this moment, or maybe he’d always known but hadn’t wanted to think about it, but his father always smiled. He never stopped. It was like he walked through life with his mouth turned upward like clown paint.
“This isn’t a friendly visit.”
“Are you here to help me?”
“I don’t know. Hugh stated you agreed to this interview, and don't give me the song and dance you did on the phone about how he said it was for my show. He’s not the kind of reporter who would lie, and my station wouldn’t agree to the story without having vetted it first,” Noah said. “So, I want to understand what you're actually doing."
His father leaned forward. “Are you calling me a liar?” his father asked in a voice so low only Noah could hear it.
Noah had grown up with that move too—the lean, the drop in register, the way it created a bubble around them that excluded everyone else in the room. It had always meant this moment was only for the two of them. Back then, it had been fun. It had usually been followed by a suggestion that they do something his mother wouldn’t necessarily approve of, but they’d deal with the consequences later. Noah kept his hands loose and his facial expression void of anything his father could use.
“I'm telling you I know the truth. That you asked Hugh to?—”
“I don’t want to be interviewed by him.”
“Great. Tell him to take a hike.”
His father’s smile got a bit wider.
That couldn’t be good.
“Hugh has an agenda,” his father said. “I can see the ambition in his eyes. He’ll do anything to get ahead, and he’s made promises he can’t keep. Promises that he believes he can use to manipulate me. I'm sure you saw what he said while promoting this interview. I never agreed to talk about my son. Never. That topic is off limits. While that was a good play on his part, it’ll only backfire on him because he can’t deliver my son. He has no idea where Angel is. Only Angel knows that."
“Yeah, I thought this was where we'd end up.” Noah shouldn’t be surprised, but part of him still was. Not so much that his father was pushing for the interview, but that his dad would be so oddly open without admitting anything.
"If you did the interview, it would solve a few problems.”