Chương 7
“That means nothing to me.”
“It means both files were edited on the same machine.”
I sat very still.
“Whose machine?”
“We couldn’t identify the user.”
“But you identified the computer.”
“Yes.”
The ambulance slowed beneath the emergency entrance canopy.
“Where was it?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Your father’s office.”
The rear doors opened before I could answer.
Hospital noise rushed in around me.
Voices, rolling wheels, an overhead announcement, someone laughing too loudly somewhere beyond the bay.
Erin’s partner unlocked the stretcher.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Victoria.”
“What?”
“Don’t confront Charles about the computer yet.”
I almost snapped at him.
Then I remembered Lucas’s memorandum.
Victoria will confront him.
He will deny it.
She will defend him against evidence she has not yet seen.
The words stung because they had already predicted me once.
“I won’t.”
Daniel did not sound convinced.
Neither was I.
A nurse pushed through the emergency doors as they wheeled me inside.
She asked my name, date of birth, gestational age, allergies, and whether there was anyone they should contact.
The answer should have been simple.
For every hospital form I had filled out during the pregnancy, the emergency contact had been Lucas.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
The nurse looked at me gently.
“Who should we call?”
I stared at the blank line on her tablet.
Behind me, my phone vibrated.
A text message appeared from my father.
Please do not let strangers destroy this family before you hear the truth.
I read it twice.
Then another message arrived.
Lucas was not protecting you from me.
He was protecting himself.
I read the message until the nurse touched my wrist and asked again who she should list as my emergency contact.
“Samantha Vance.”
The name came out automatically.
The nurse entered it without comment.
I almost corrected myself and gave her Daniel’s number instead, then decided I did not know Daniel well enough to make him responsible for anything involving blood, babies, or my father.
Another contraction tightened around my back and abdomen before the nurse finished typing.
She watched the monitor while I breathed through it.
“Three and a half minutes.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It sounds like labor.”
“I was hoping for something more nuanced.”
She gave me the smallest smile.
“We can be nuanced after we check your cervix.”
The maternity triage room was too bright and too warm.
Someone had painted the walls a pale yellow that probably looked cheerful to people who were not lying beneath fluorescent lights wondering whether their dead husband had been hiding something monstrous.
A resident introduced herself, examined me, and said I was four centimeters dilated.
Erin had already given the hospital the details about my fall and possible assault, so another nurse photographed the scrape on my knee and the reddened area along my scalp after asking permission.
That made the morning feel official in a way the deputies had not.
Injuries turned into images.
Images turned into records.
Records could no longer be argued away at a kitchen table.
My father’s text remained open on my phone.
Lucas was not protecting you from me.
He was protecting himself.
I typed, What does that mean?
Then I deleted it.
I typed, Stay away from me.
I deleted that too.
Finally I locked the phone and put it facedown beside the bed.
The door opened twenty minutes later.
Samantha walked in carrying a leather document case and two cups of coffee.
She saw my face and stopped.
“The other one is decaf.”
“I’m not worried about the coffee.”
“You usually complain when I bring bad coffee.”
“Usually my husband hasn’t been accused of something from beyond the grave.”
Samantha set both cups on the counter.
She was forty-six, small, precise, and perpetually dressed as though she might be summoned to federal court with fifteen minutes’ notice.
Today there was rain dried along one shoulder of her navy coat.
“What did Charles say?”
I handed her the phone.
She read the message once.
No visible reaction.
Then she read it again.
“That’s not nothing.”
“I figured.”
“It’s also not evidence.”
“I figured that too.”
She gave the phone back.
“I need you to hear something before we read Lucas’s memorandum.”
“I am having a baby.”
“I noticed.”
“And my father may have stolen millions of dollars.”
“Yes.”
“And apparently my husband may have been protecting himself from something.”
“Maybe.”
“So whatever you’re about to tell me, make it short.”
Samantha pulled the visitor chair closer.
“There is a difference between Lucas hiding information from you and Lucas committing wrongdoing.”
“That sounds like lawyer language.”
“It is.”
“Do you believe he did something wrong?”
She held my gaze.
“I don’t know yet.”
The answer hurt precisely because she did not soften it.
A contraction came.
I gripped the bedrail and waited for it to crest.
Samantha sat silently until my fingers loosened.
“Read it.”
She opened the document case.
The memorandum was twelve pages, clipped rather than stapled.
Lucas always hated staples because he said they made copying documents unnecessarily annoying.
Seeing the black binder clip almost undid me.
Samantha slid the first page toward me.
His signature was at the bottom.
I touched it with one finger.
Not because I expected anything.
Just because it was his.
The first page was dated seven weeks before his death.
Samantha began reading aloud only after I nodded.
Lucas had written that he suspected financial misconduct involving vendor payments, acquisition records, and access credentials.
He had not accused Charles directly.
Instead, he listed three possibilities.
Charles was stealing.
Someone was using Charles’s authority without his knowledge.
Or Charles knew about improper activity but believed it was protecting the company from a larger threat.
“That third one sounds insane.”
“Keep listening.”
Lucas wrote that Charles had become increasingly erratic around cash-flow discussions during the previous year.
He resisted audits.
May you like
He demanded faster distributions from a legacy ownership account.
Twice, he tried to move vendor approvals away from Daniel.
