Chương 4
“I haven’t said you did.”
“That key isn’t mine.”
Charles closed his eyes again.
Courtney pointed at him.
“He gave it to me.”
My father’s head snapped toward her.
“You found it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You told me you found it upstairs.”
“I have never been upstairs before today.”
The lie Charles had been building seemed to loosen at the edges.
Not collapse.
Not yet.
But loosen.
Morales took out a small notebook.
“When did he give you the key?”
Courtney looked at me, then at Charles.
“I don’t know.”
“Today?”
“No.”
“Yesterday?”
Charles said, “You don’t have to answer questions.”
Courtney’s face flushed.
“I know.”
He lowered his voice.
“Then don’t.”
That did it.
Whatever loyalty she had been trying to maintain turned brittle.
“You told me this was legal.”
Charles stared at her.
Harrison said, “What was legal?”
Courtney swallowed.
“The paperwork.”
My pulse seemed to jump into my throat.
Charles stepped toward her.
Harrison moved between them.
“Stay back.”
“She’s confused.”
Courtney laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Apparently everybody around you is confused.”
“Courtney.”
“You said Victoria signed everything.”
My father’s face lost color again.
I should have felt triumphant.
Instead, I felt sick.
Courtney looked at me.
For the first time that morning, there was no smugness in her expression.
“I thought you knew.”
“You notarized my signature.”
“I thought you signed it.”
“Were you there?”
She hesitated.
That was enough.
“Were you there when I supposedly signed it?”
“No.”
The contraction struck before I could say anything else.
It came hard enough to erase the porch, the deputies, Courtney, even my father.
I folded over myself with both hands gripping the stretcher rails.
Erin checked her watch.
“Breathe.”
I did not argue this time.
When it passed, I was sweating.
Her partner closed one ambulance door halfway.
“We need to transport.”
Harrison nodded.
“We can continue this at the hospital later.”
My father came toward me.
“I’m going with her.”
“No.”
The answer left my mouth before anyone else could speak.
He stopped.
“Victoria.”
“No.”
“I’m your father.”
“I know.”
Something in my voice made him flinch.
It was tiny, almost invisible.
That hurt more than I expected.
He had not always been this man.
Or maybe he had been, in softer forms, and I had spent thirty-one years explaining those forms away.
Charles looked toward the deputies.
“She shouldn’t be alone.”
Erin adjusted the blood-pressure cuff.
“She won’t be.”
“I’m family.”
“So was Lucas.”
My father’s face hardened.
There it was.
The old fracture between them.
Charles had hated that Lucas never deferred to him.
Lucas had never yelled back.
That somehow made it worse.
During their last Thanksgiving together, Charles had spent twenty minutes telling him how a logistics company should handle regional expansion.
Lucas had listened while cutting turkey.
When my father finished, Lucas had said, “That approach worked in 2009.”
Nothing else.
Charles talked about the insult for months.
Now I wondered how much of this had really started there.
Not with grief.
Not with money.
With humiliation.
With a man who could tolerate almost anything except being unnecessary.
Harrison handed Morales the evidence sleeve.
“Secure this.”
Charles watched the key disappear into her bag.
His phone rang a third time.
He ignored it.
Then my own phone rang.
Samantha again.
I answered.
“Are you heading to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“St. Joseph’s.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
I glanced at Charles.
“What did Mercer say?”
“They froze outgoing transfers connected to the trust.”
“Connected to what exactly?”
“That’s one of the things we need to clarify.”
Her hesitation made me cold.
“Samantha.”
“There was an attempted transfer this morning.”
“How much?”
“I don’t want to discuss account specifics over speaker.”
I turned speaker off and pressed the phone to my ear.
“How much?”
“Four point eight million dollars.”
The number did not seem real.
I looked at my father.
He was standing six feet away.
Four point eight million dollars separated us.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
“Where was it going?”
“A holding company.”
“Whose?”
“We’re tracing ownership.”
“Do you know?”
Another hesitation.
“Yes.”
The ambulance doors were still open enough that I could see Charles arguing quietly with Harrison.
“Tell me.”
“The company was incorporated five months ago.”
“Samantha.”
“It lists Courtney Baldwin as the sole member.”
I looked at Courtney.
She was sitting on the porch step now, elbows on her knees, staring at the lawn.
She did not look like somebody who controlled a company worth receiving nearly five million dollars.
She looked like somebody waiting outside a principal’s office.
“Does she know?”
“I can’t answer that.”
I watched Courtney pick at a loose thread on her jeans.
Then a worse question came to me.
“Why would Lucas have a fraud clause specifically protecting me from this?”
Samantha said nothing.
“Samantha.”
“He was concerned.”
“About my father?”
“Yes.”
The word fell cleanly.
No qualification.
No lawyerly softening.
“When?”
“Before the accident.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“How long before?”
“About six weeks.”
The air inside the ambulance seemed to change.
Six weeks before Lucas died, he had been worried enough about Charles to build legal protections around my assets.
And he had never told me.
“What happened?”
“I think Lucas discovered something inside the company.”
“What?”
“He didn’t tell me everything.”
That sounded unlike Lucas, which meant it frightened me.
“He told you enough to change the trust.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me after he died?”
“Because he instructed me not to unless someone tried to interfere with the estate.”
I stared at the dark screen of the fetal monitor.
“And now someone has.”
“Yes.”
Another contraction began.
I shut my eyes.
Somewhere beyond the ambulance doors, my father said my name.
I heard Harrison tell him to stay back.
Samantha kept talking, but the pain swallowed several words.
When I could hear again, she was saying, “Victoria, there’s one more thing.”
“I’m getting tired of that sentence.”
“I know.”
May you like
“What?”
“Lucas left a sealed memorandum in my office.”
