Chương 13
Tax documents lived in shared folders.
Insurance cards sat in the same drawer.
Copies of identification had traveled through email during mortgage applications, refinancing attempts, benefits enrollment.
Trust had turned our lives into one large unlocked filing cabinet.
“You need to tell Darcy everything you sent.”
“No.”
I closed my eyes.
“You need to tell your attorney, and your attorney can tell Darcy.”
Another silence.
The distance in that sentence seemed to reach both of us at once.
Julian’s voice softened.
“Okay.”
I hung up before either of us could say something personal.
At two thirty, Darcy called back.
“I have the audit trail.”
I stopped folding a towel I had taken from the dryer for no reason except I needed my hands occupied.
“And?”
“The acknowledgment was signed through an electronic signature service.”
“When?”
“November third at 9:14 p.m.”
I searched my memory.
Nothing came.
Then something did.
November third had been a Sunday.
I had spent most of that weekend in Richmond with my aunt after she fell and fractured her wrist.
“Where was it sent?”
“To an email address that resembles yours.”
“Resembles?”
Darcy spelled it.
My real address contained my middle initial.
The address used on the document did not.
I had never owned it.
“Who created that?”
“We don’t know.”
“What about the IP address?”
“There is one.”
“Where?”
“Northern Virginia.”
“That could be Julian.”
“It could be thousands of people.”
I gripped the towel.
“Can we get more specific?”
“Possibly with legal process.”
“What else?”
“The signature certificate says the document was viewed eleven minutes after delivery and signed three minutes later.”
“Was identification required?”
“Apparently not.”
“Just email access?”
“And an access code.”
“Where did the code go?”
“Same email.”
“That’s worthless.”
“For identity verification, I share your concern.”
I began pacing again.
“Can we find out who registered the fake email?”
“Yes, potentially.”
“Potentially.”
“Sloan.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“Information is not proof.”
“Good.”
I hated her.
Then she added, “There’s another issue.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“The document uploaded to Ridgeway did not come directly from Ridgeway’s signing system.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“It was signed through a separate account and then uploaded as a completed PDF.”
“Whose account?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Daniel?”
“Possibly.”
“Julian?”
“Possibly.”
I closed my eyes.
“You’re killing me.”
“I would rather irritate you than give you false certainty.”
I looked down at the towel in my hand.
I had folded it into a narrow rectangle instead of the square I normally used.
I unfolded it and started over.
“What does Julian’s attorney say?”
“That his client denies creating the email address or applying the signature.”
“Of course he does.”
“Yes.”
“You sound like you believe him.”
“I sound like an attorney reading another attorney’s statement.”
That almost made me laugh.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
Her voice changed.
“The false email address was used more than once.”
My hands stopped.
“What do you mean?”
“It appears in the metadata for two additional documents.”
“What documents?”
“One is a financial disclosure acknowledgment.”
My throat tightened.
“And the other?”
“A consent related to the personal credit facility.”
I sat down slowly.
“Tell me my name is not on that one too.”
Darcy was silent.
That was answer enough.
“How much?”
“The document references seventy thousand dollars.”
The exact amount Julian had described as personal credit.
I pressed the towel against my mouth.
“So somebody used my name to help him borrow seventy thousand dollars.”
“That appears possible.”
“Without me knowing.”
“Yes.”
“Does that make me liable?”
“We are going to contest any obligation attributed to you if you did not authorize it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
She paused.
“I cannot promise you how the lender will respond before they review the evidence.”
I stared toward the kitchen window.
The golden retriever was outside again, lying in a patch of sun while its owner washed a car.
The dog rolled onto its back.
I envied it with an intensity that felt absurd.
“What do I do now?”
“First, freeze your credit.”
I straightened.
“Why?”
“Because someone had enough personal information to impersonate you in a financial transaction.”
The story changed again inside me.
Until that moment, the fraud had belonged to Julian’s terrible business decision.
Now it had crossed into my name.
My records.
My identity.
My life.
Darcy continued.
“Then change passwords on your email, financial accounts, cloud storage, tax portals, and anything else containing sensitive information.”
“Do you think Julian accessed them?”
“I think we do not know who has had access to what.”
There was that sentence again.
We do not know.
I had spent most of my adult life making numbers reconcile.
A discrepancy existed because something caused it.
A payment went somewhere.
A signature came from someone.
A lie had an author.
For the first time, I understood how terrifying it was to know the equation had an answer while having no idea what the answer was.
My phone vibrated with another message.
This one was not from Julian.
It came from an unfamiliar number.
I opened it.
There was no greeting.
Only a photograph.
It showed Julian sitting across from a man at a restaurant table.
The timestamp in the corner read December 14, 8:32 p.m.
Julian had told me he was at a client dinner that night.
The man facing him was partly turned away from the camera.
Below the photograph was one sentence.
Ask your husband why he says they never met.
I stared at the photograph until the pixels began to blur.
Darcy said my name twice before I answered.
“I just got a message.”
“What kind of message?”
“A photo of Julian.”
“With whom?”
“I don’t know.”
I described it.
Darcy’s voice changed immediately.
“Do not reply.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Send me a screenshot and preserve the original message.”
I did both.
Then I called Camille.
She answered on the first ring.
“What happened?”
“Put Julian on.”
There was a pause.
“Sloan.”
May you like
“Now.”
A few seconds later, his voice came through.
