My boyfriend was in a true crime podcast, you wont believe what happened next.

The Truth and the Journey

I climbed into the new car, a plain sedan that smelled like coffee and cigarettes, and we were moving again before I even got my seat belt on. Ethan was in the passenger seat now, and he kept his eyes on the side mirror, watching for cars that might be following us.

James drove back up to street level and headed for the highway going south. Nobody spoke for maybe 10 minutes, and the silence felt heavy and wrong. Then Ethan turned in his seat to face me and started talking.

He said he spent two years searching for my father after he got old enough to start looking on his own. He tracked down every Michael Bane in the country, followed dead ends, paid people for information that went nowhere.

Then he found me instead, found my social media and my address, and realized I was the daughter. He figured if he got close to me, I might eventually lead him to where my dad was hiding.

Maybe I’d mention something useful, or maybe my dad would reach out to me, and Ethan would be there to see it. So, he engineered a meeting at the coffee shop where I went every morning before class.

He learned my schedule and my habits, and he made sure we kept running into each other until I thought it was fate or luck or whatever stupid thing I believed about the universe bringing people together. My chest felt tight, and I couldn’t get enough air.

I asked him if anything between us was real, any of it, even one moment. He went quiet for way too long, and I watched him trying to decide what to say.

Finally, he said it started as surveillance, but became complicated. That was it. That was his answer. Complicated. It hurt worse than if he just said no because it meant he was still calculating.

Still deciding what truth to give me and what to hold back. I wanted to scream at him or hit him or jump out of the moving car, but I just sat there feeling numb.

James cut in and said we needed to focus on getting to Colorado before the organization found my father. He pulled out a laptop from under his seat and opened it while steering with one hand.

He turned it so I could see the screen and there was the podcast episode, the one that started all of this maybe 2 hours ago. It already had 200,000 downloads.

The comment section was full of people theorizing about where Ethan might be now. Someone had screenshot the part about Portland and Danny Gillespo and posted it everywhere.

Another person was discussing possible locations in the city based on property records they’d found online. The internet had basically done the organization’s work for them.

It narrowed down the search area to a few square miles. James closed the laptop and said we had maybe a 12-hour head start if we were lucky.

We stopped at a rest area 2 hours outside Portland and James got out to make calls to his contacts. Ethan and I sat in the car in awkward silence.

I tried to figure out which emotion to feel first. Should I be more angry about the lies or more terrified about the people hunting us? Both feelings were fighting for space in my brain.

I couldn’t process either one properly. I looked out the window at families walking to the bathrooms and getting snacks from vending machines. I was learning everything I knew was fake.

Ethan started talking without me asking him to. He told me about the night his family died, how he’d been at a friend’s house and came home late to find cop cars and ambulances everywhere.

He went in through the back window because he knew something was wrong and he found everyone already gone. His parents, his little sister, even the dog. Blood everywhere and silence.

He barely made it out before the people who did it came back to check their work. He’d been running ever since, changing identities every few years.

He never staying anywhere long enough to build a real life or make real friends or trust anyone. James had been helping him the whole time.

James was moving money around, creating new identities, teaching him how to disappear. I realized my father made the same choice. At least he got out before the violence reached us.

I asked Ethan if he knew why my dad went into hiding instead of testifying like he was supposed to. Ethan explained that my father was supposed to testify the same week as Ethan’s dad.

Someone tipped him off about the planned attack. My dad had maybe 6 hours warning and he used it to disappear. He left my mom and me behind with some story about needing to leave for work.

He probably thought he was protecting us by keeping us in the dark. Instead he just made us easy targets if anyone ever connected us to him. James came back to the car and his face looked grim.

His contacts confirmed the organization sent teams to both Portland and Denver within an hour of the podcast going live. We were lucky to get out when we did.

My father might not know anyone was coming for him yet. If he was still using the same identity after 15 years, he might think he was safe. Might have gotten comfortable.

We got back on the road and I pulled out the phone Ethan had given me, a burner he said was safe to use. I tried calling the number I had for my dad.

I’d used the number maybe three times in 15 years when my mom managed to arrange supervised contact. It went straight to a disconnected message and my stomach dropped.

Ethan turned around in his seat and looked at my face. He asked what was wrong and I just stared at the phone in my hand for a second before telling him the number was disconnected.

I explained that I barely knew my father anyway because my mom told me he left us when I was 7 years old. She said he moved away for work and didn’t want to be part of our lives anymore.

I grew up thinking my dad just abandoned us. I believed he chose his career over his family and never looked back. I had no idea he was in witness protection.

I didn’t know that any of this was connected to organized crime or people getting killed. My whole childhood was built on a lie.

I was supposed to just accept that everything I believed about my family was fake. James kept his eyes on the road but spoke up from the driver’s seat. He said my mother probably didn’t know the full truth either.

Witness protection keeps families separated and in the dark to prevent exactly this kind of situation. If my mom knew where my dad was, she could accidentally give away information.

The whole system was designed to make sure no one knew anything. My mom spent 15 years thinking her husband abandoned her when really he was trying to protect us.

Now that the organization knows to look for Michael Bane’s family, my mom might be in danger, too. They would figure out that Michael had a wife and daughter.

If they couldn’t find him, they might try to use us to draw him out. I grabbed Ethan’s arm and told him to give me his phone right now.

He handed it over without arguing, and I dialed my mom’s number with shaking hands. She answered on the third ring, sounding confused about the unknown number.

I didn’t give her time to ask questions. I told her she needed to leave the house right now and go stay with her sister without explaining why.

I tried to keep my voice calm so she wouldn’t panic. My hands were gripping the phone so hard my knuckles turned white.

My mom started asking what was going on and why I was calling from a strange number. She wanted to know if I was okay and where I was and what kind of trouble I was in.

I just kept repeating that she needed to leave immediately and I would explain everything later. I told her to pack a bag and get in her car and drive to Aunt Sarah’s house.

I told her not to tell anyone where she was going. My voice kept getting higher and faster and I could hear the fear bleeding through.

She finally agreed because she could hear something was really wrong in my voice. She said she was grabbing her purse and would leave in 5 minutes.

I told her I loved her and ended the call before she could ask anything else. James switched lanes and merged onto a different highway heading east.

He said we were going to drive through the night to put as much distance as possible between us and Portland.

Ethan and James would take turns at the wheel while I tried to sleep in the back seat. I knew sleep wasn’t going to happen. We drove for hours with James behind the wheel first.

Ethan sat in the passenger seat watching the mirrors constantly. I lay down in the back and closed my eyes, but kept startling awake every few minutes.

Every set of headlights behind us felt like a threat. I would drift off for maybe 10 minutes and then jerk awake thinking I heard gunshots or feeling the car swerve.

I caught Ethan watching me in the mirror with an expression I couldn’t read. It might have been concern or guilt or maybe just calculation.

I hated that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. We stopped once for gas at a station in the middle of nowhere. James paid cash while Ethan and I stayed in the car.

Nobody spoke much during the drive. The sun came up somewhere in Idaho and we pulled into a truck stop near the border to switch drivers.

I went inside and splashed water on my face in the bathroom sink. I stared at my reflection and barely recognized the person looking back.

When I came out, James was standing by the car with his phone pressed to his ear and his face had gone completely pale. Ethan saw James’ expression at the same time I did.

We both walked over as James ended the call. He told us that someone just tried to grab my mom from her house about an hour ago.

Two men showed up claiming to be police officers and tried to force their way inside. She had already left following my warning. They missed her by about 20 minutes.

The neighbors called real police when they saw the men breaking down the door. The reality hit me like a punch in the stomach.

These people would kill anyone connected to the witnesses. My mom almost died because of secrets my father kept from us.

She came within 20 minutes of being kidnapped or murdered by people looking for information she didn’t even have. I felt anger rising up and replacing the fear, hot and sharp in my chest.

I was mad at my dad for disappearing and leaving us vulnerable. I was mad at my mom for lying about why he left even if she didn’t know the truth.

I was mad at Ethan for using me as bait to find my father and putting me in danger. Everyone in my life had lied to me.

People were trying to kill my family because of choices made 15 years ago that nobody bothered to explain. Ethan tried to apologize again.

I didn’t want to hear it right now because I needed to focus on staying alive and finding my father before the organization did. We could deal with relationship drama later if we survived long enough for it to matter.

He backed off, but I could see the hurt on his face. This was confusing because I didn’t know if his feelings were real or just more manipulation.

Maybe he actually cared about me, or maybe he was just good at pretending. Either way, it didn’t change what he had done or the situation we were in now.

We got back in the car with Ethan driving this time and crossed into Utah as the morning sun got higher.

James explained we were taking a longer route to avoid major highways where the organization might have people watching. The interstate would be faster but more dangerous because there were only so many routes from Portland to Denver.

This backroad route was going to take us almost 2 days to reach Denver. We had no idea if my father was even still alive or if the organization had already found him.

He explained he was a federal agent 15 years ago who helped Ethan’s family prepare to testify. He was part of the team setting up their protection.

When the protection failed and everyone died, he felt responsible for not seeing the threat coming. He quit the agency and spent the last 15 years helping Ethan survive.

He was moving money around, creating new identities and teaching him how to disappear. That realization sat heavy in my chest as we kept driving through the dark Utah landscape.

I couldn’t tell if that made him some kind of hero or just someone who couldn’t let go of his guilt. Ethan’s motivations were still a mess of lies and half-truths.

We drove for another 3 hours before James pulled off at a tiny motel that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1970s. He paid cash for a room with two beds.

I lay down on one of the beds, fully clothed, and stared at the water stained ceiling tiles. My brain wouldn’t stop replaying everything that had happened in the last day.

24 hours ago, I was listening to a podcast in my apartment with no idea my entire life was built on lies. Now, I was in a motel room in the middle of nowhere.

I was with a boyfriend who wasn’t really my boyfriend and a former federal agent who’d gone rogue. I heard Ethan shift on his bed, and then he sat up on the edge of it.

He started talking quietly, saying that what he told me about his feelings was actually true. He never planned on falling for me, and it made everything way more complicated.

I wanted to believe what he was saying, but I had no idea how to trust someone who’d already admitted they approached me as part of some plan to find my father.

Every nice thing he’d ever said or done could have been calculated. Every kiss could have been strategy. I told him we needed to focus on staying alive first.

He went quiet and I could feel him looking at me in the dark, but I kept my eyes on the ceiling. Eventually, I heard him lie back down.

James was shaking my shoulder and pale morning light was coming through the thin curtains. Ethan was already up and packing his bag. James’ phone was in his hand.

The organization had people actively searching Colorado right now. They figured out several possible locations where my father might be living based on the podcast’s hints.

We were still maybe 12 hours away from Denver if we drove straight through. We couldn’t just drive into the city without knowing exactly where my father was.

Ethan suggested we try to find property records or utility bills under the name Richard Hayes to get an actual address. James nodded and said he had a contact.

His contact could access those databases without leaving any kind of trail. It would take a few hours to search through the records and cross reference everything.

We got back in the car and started driving closer to Denver while we waited. Every mile that passed felt like we were racing against people who had more resources.

I asked Ethan what the actual plan was if we found my father still alive. He admitted he didn’t really have a plan beyond warning him.

The problem was there wasn’t anywhere actually safe as long as the organization existed and wanted us dead. They had people everywhere and unlimited money to keep searching.

We could run for another 15 years like Ethan had been doing, but that wasn’t really living. It was just surviving. We stopped for gas at a station outside Grand Junction.

James’ phone rang. He told us his contact had come through with an address for a Richard Hayes living in a suburb called Lakewood.

We were close enough now that we could be there in 6 hours if we pushed straight through. Ethan wanted to approach carefully and scout the location first.

I understood being careful, but I was worried that if we waited too long, the organization would find my father before we did. We’d be too late to warn him.

We went back and forth about it while James drove and finally compromised. We’d drive past the house once to see if there were any obvious signs of trouble.

If everything looked normal, we’d approach. If we saw anything suspicious, we’d figure out another way. The sun was getting lower as we crossed into Colorado.

I realized I was about to see my father for the first time in 15 years. I had no idea if he’d even recognize me or what I was supposed to say to him.

The last time I saw him, I was 7 years old. Now, he was a stranger who’d been living under a fake name and had evidence that could bring down a criminal organization.

I didn’t know that person at all. We crossed into Colorado around noon. I couldn’t stop checking the mirrors like Ethan had been doing.