Chương 11
“What?”
“Him.”
Samantha waited.
“I slept beside him.”
“I raised children with him.”
“I let him pack their lunches.”
“I let him drive them.”
“I let him make pancakes shaped like animals every Sunday because he was better at it than me.”
My voice broke on the last word.
“I was good at finding fraud in strangers.”
Samantha said nothing.
“I came home to one and didn’t see it.”
“That is not a professional failure.”
“It feels like one.”
“It isn’t.”
“It feels like a maternal failure too.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“That feeling is going to lie to you for a while.”
I wanted to argue.
I did not have the energy.
We got in the car.
Halfway home, Miller called.
Samantha put him on speaker.
“We got consent from Fletcher Urban’s outside counsel to preserve the server data.”
“Preserve,” I said.
“Not search?”
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“Company counsel is cooperating with preservation but wants a warrant for access.”
“Of course they do.”
“There’s more.”
My body tightened.
“What?”
“The IT administrator confirmed the recorders automatically synced when docked.”
“Was Silas’s docked?”
“We’re checking.”
“That means you don’t know.”
“Correct.”
I hated his carefulness again.
Then he continued.
“The administrator also said Silas had administrator privileges.”
Samantha glanced at me.
“Could he delete files?”
“Possibly.”
“Then what good is the server?”
“Backups.”
That word changed everything.
“Off-site?”
“Yes.”
“Immutable?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Retention?”
“Evelyn.”
“Right.”
I pressed my palms together.
“Sorry.”
“No apology needed.”
There was a pause.
Then Miller said, “We found something else on Kayla’s drive.”
Samantha slowed the car.
“What?”
“A PDF export of an internal email.”
“From who?”
“Marcus Vale.”
I sat upright.
“CFO.”
“Yes.”
“To Silas?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Five days before the crash.”
“What does it say?”
Miller hesitated.
“He asks why Silas authorized a four-million-dollar key-person insurance package through a subsidiary without board approval.”
My throat tightened.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“What part?”
“Key-person insurance covers employees or executives.”
“Yes.”
“The twins weren’t employees.”
“We know.”
“Then what was he insuring?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
I stared through the windshield.
Rain had started again, thin and almost invisible beneath the streetlights.
Miller’s voice came through the speaker.
“There’s one more line.”
“What?”
“Marcus writes, ‘If this is what I think it is, I’m not putting my name on it.’”
Samantha pulled to the curb.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
For the first time that night, the financial trail no longer looked like a side crime attached to an attempted murder.
It looked like the architecture underneath it.
And somewhere inside that architecture was a man at Silas’s company who might have known enough to stop everything five days before my children died.
The next morning, Marcus Vale called me before seven.
I was awake anyway.
Sleep had come in pieces, none longer than twenty minutes.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Silas saying the wrong people were in the car.
Marcus did not say hello.
He said, “I should have gone to the police.”
I sat up on the couch.
I had fallen asleep there sometime after midnight because the bedroom still felt occupied by a man who was now in county lockup.
“What did you know?”
There was a pause.
“Not enough.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“You’re the CFO.”
“Yes.”
“So try again.”
His breath came through the phone.
“I knew he was moving money.”
“How much?”
“I knew about the policy structure.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Another pause.
“About three hundred thousand over six months.”
I stood.
The room tilted slightly from exhaustion.
“From where?”
“Operating accounts.”
“To what?”
“Subsidiaries.”
“Which ones?”
“Three.”
“Names.”
“Evelyn.”
“Names.”
He gave them to me.
I recognized two.
The third I did not.
“Halcyon Risk Management?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“A shell.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re telling me you approved transfers into a shell company and never established beneficial ownership?”
“I didn’t approve them.”
“You saw them.”
“Yes.”
“And did nothing.”
“I asked questions.”
“You sent an email.”
“I did more than send an email.”
“What?”
Silence.
My anger sharpened.
“What did you do, Marcus?”
“I froze a payment.”
“To Halcyon?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“One hundred twenty thousand.”
“When?”
“Six days before the crash.”
I closed my eyes.
That was one day before his email to Silas.
“What happened after you froze it?”
“Silas came to my office.”
“And?”
“He told me to release it.”
“Did you?”
“Eventually.”
The word hit me harder than if he had said yes.
“Eventually.”
“He threatened to fire me.”
“So?”
Marcus exhaled.
“I have two kids in college.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My children are dead.”
“I know.”
“No.”
My voice broke.
“You know words.”
He went silent.
I pressed my thumb against my forehead until it hurt.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Because I don’t trust Silas’s attorneys.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“I saved copies.”
My hand dropped.
“Of what?”
“Emails.”
“Transfers?”
“Yes.”
“Board records?”
“Yes.”
“Insurance documents?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Not on company systems.”
I stared at the dark television screen.
“Did you give them to police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying to understand my exposure.”
That answer, ugly as it was, sounded real.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want Samantha Page.”
I looked toward the kitchen.
Samantha had gone home three hours earlier.
Claire was asleep upstairs in Rose’s room with the light on.
“You want a lawyer.”
“I want to know what happens if I walk in with everything.”
“You tell the truth.”
“That is not legal advice.”
“No.”
“It’s also not how this works.”
“You’re right.”
I lowered my voice.
“It works like this.”
“You spend days calculating whether two dead children are worth more or less than your career.”
Marcus inhaled sharply.
“That isn’t fair.”
“No.”
I looked toward the stairs.
“Neither is burying six-year-olds.”
May you like
He did not answer.
For several seconds, I heard nothing but faint traffic on his end.
