Chương 2
Claire’s voice became quieter. “Do not move toward him.”
Lucas gave a small shrug, almost a smile. “She’s afraid of you now.”
The words landed because they were true.
Ethan let his hands fall to his sides.
“What are those papers?” he asked.
Lucas’s smile disappeared.
“Business documents.”
“Why is Northline on them?”
“You’ve seen the vendor reports.”
“I’ve seen Northline invoices. I’ve never seen Northline loan documents.”
Margaret bent carefully and picked up one of the pages. “It’s a shell company.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucas said.
“I found the state filing.”
Lucas stepped off the final stair.
Claire pulled Noah closer.
Ethan raised one hand, not as a fist but as a boundary. “Stay there.”
“You’re taking orders from her now?”
“I’m asking you to stay there.”
“No. You’re performing calm because Claire told you to. That’s different.”
Lucas had always known which truths to sharpen.
Margaret reached for her phone. “I’m calling the police.”
Lucas’s head turned toward her.
Claire moved first. Without loosening her hold on Noah, she stretched one hand toward the phone on the island and dragged it closer. Her fingers shook, but she entered the emergency number without looking down.
Lucas came off the stairs.
Ethan stepped between him and the island.
For one instant they stood chest to chest. Lucas was four inches shorter and much thinner, but he did not back away. His breath smelled faintly of peppermint gum.
“If the police see those documents,” he said, “they see your signature. Your company. Your authorization codes. Your phone approving every transfer.”
Ethan heard the dispatcher answer behind him.
Lucas lowered his voice.
“You think they’ll believe you didn’t know?”
“Move back.”
“I can fix it.”
“Move back, Lucas.”
“I can put the money back.”
Margaret stared at him. “How much is gone?”
Lucas looked toward her, and Ethan saw the calculation: how much they knew, how much they only suspected, which lie still had room to live.
Claire spoke to the dispatcher. She gave the address, then said there had been an assault and the man responsible was still inside the house.
Lucas moved toward the mudroom.
Ethan’s muscles tightened.
He could catch him before he reached the door. The distance was nothing. Two long steps, one arm around the chest, a knee behind Lucas’s leg. He had done harder things in construction accidents when men panicked on ladders or scaffolding.
Claire said his name once.
That stopped him.
Lucas glanced back as he opened the mudroom door. His expression carried triumph and injury in equal measure.
“You always wait until it’s too late,” he said.
Then he ran.
The back door banged against the exterior wall. Ethan heard shoes—or bare feet—strike the wooden steps, then the gravel along the side yard.
He took one step after him.
Claire said, “Please.”
Ethan stayed.
The choice felt terrible. It did not feel brave. It felt like standing still while something essential escaped through his own backyard.
Margaret reached the door and locked it.
“He has my phone,” Ethan said.
“No,” Claire answered.
His phone lay on the third stair, face down.
Lucas must have dropped it when he ran. Or placed it there. With Lucas, even the direction of a fallen object seemed capable of becoming an argument.
Ethan picked it up by the edges. The screen was still unlocked. A banking application was open beneath a list of six transfers, each sent to Northline Supply Group. The smallest was twelve thousand dollars. The largest was forty-eight thousand.
The total was more than Ethan could calculate in his head.
He handed the phone to Margaret.
“Don’t touch anything else.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I know.”
It was the kind of correction she had made all his life. Usually it irritated him. Now it steadied the room.
Sirens approached from the main road.
Claire sagged slightly against the cabinets.
Ethan knelt several feet away, careful not to close the distance without permission.
“Is Noah hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you?”
She looked at him.
He had asked the wrong question twice.
“I need a doctor,” she said. “And I need you not to come near me right now.”
His throat worked before he could answer.
“All right.”
The police arrived in two cars. Their lights flashed against the white cabinets and turned the kitchen windows blue, then red, then blue again. The first officers entered with their hands near their holsters and separated everyone before listening to any full account.
One officer took Claire and Noah into the living room. Another led Margaret to the dining area. Ethan remained in the kitchen beside the island, where the legal papers lay scattered across the stone like the remains of an argument no one had finished.
He watched strangers move through his house and discovered that ownership meant almost nothing once violence had occurred inside it.
An officer asked where Lucas might go.
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have a vehicle?”
“Not here.”
“Friends nearby?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have access to weapons?”
Ethan hesitated.
The officer noticed.
“There’s a locked gun safe in my bedroom closet,” Ethan said. “The key is on my key ring. The combination is mine.”
“Could he know it?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer followed him from question to question.
Did Lucas have access to the business accounts? He did not know.
Did Lucas know Ethan’s phone passcode? Apparently.
How long had Lucas been in the house? Claire said since morning. Ethan had believed Lucas left before lunch.
Why had Margaret come? Because of a message sent from Ethan’s phone.
When had Ethan last seen his phone? On the console of his truck at the job site, though he now remembered Lucas bringing him coffee and leaning through the open passenger door.
Did Ethan assault Margaret?
May you like
The officer did not use the word grab.
Ethan looked across the room. Margaret sat upright at the dining table while another officer photographed the reddening marks around her wrist.
