Chương 2
“Warren changed.”
Charles stayed quiet.
“He started coming home late.”
“Lillian.”
“He started locking his office.”
Charles remembered the deleted messages.
The unknown number.
The conversation from months earlier.
“What did you find?”
She swallowed.
“Financial records.”
Charles leaned closer.
“From the pharmacy?”
She nodded.
“Money was missing.”
“How much?”
“Almost two million dollars.”
Charles felt the room become colder.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you confront him?”
Lillian looked away.
“I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was confused.”
Her eyes returned to Charles.
“He said I was getting old and imagining things.”
Charles felt anger rise inside him.
That was not the Warren he remembered.
Or maybe it was the Warren nobody had ever seen.
“Did he know you found the records?”
Lillian hesitated.
“Yes.”
Charles stood completely still.
“How?”
“Because I told him.”
The monitor began climbing again.
The nurse stepped forward, but Charles raised his hand.
“Lillian, listen to me.”
She looked at him.
“You are safe here.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
The word was barely audible.
“He has friends here.”
Charles stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
Lillian’s hand slowly released his.
“I saw him talking to someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Charles felt a sudden urgency.
“What did they talk about?”
Lillian looked terrified.
“I heard one sentence.”
“What sentence?”
She took a slow breath.
“Your friend said, ‘If anything happens, make sure Charles believes it was an accident.’”
Charles felt every muscle in his body freeze.
For forty years, he had trusted Warren Prescott.
For forty years, he believed he knew the man completely.
But now, standing beside Lillian’s hospital bed, he realized something terrifying.
The person he knew might have only been the person Warren wanted everyone to see.
Charles walked out of the room without saying another word.
He found Detective Teresa Morales waiting near the nurses’ station.
One look at his face told her something had changed.
“What did she say?”
Charles looked back at Lillian through the glass.
Then he answered.
“Start investigating Warren Prescott.”
Teresa closed her notebook.
“Officially?”
Charles nodded.
“Officially.”
And for the first time in forty years, Charles Fletcher stopped protecting his best friend.
He started searching for the truth.
The first place Detective Teresa Morales went was not Warren Prescott’s home.
It was his pharmacy.
By seven in the morning, the doors of Prescott Family Pharmacy were already open, but the employees immediately noticed something unusual.
Warren had not arrived.
That had never happened before.
For twenty-five years, he had been the first person inside every morning.
He checked inventory himself.
He reviewed prescriptions himself.
He spoke to every employee before the day became busy.
The staff knew him as a man who controlled every detail.
That was why Teresa noticed the empty office immediately.
“Does anyone have access to his office?” she asked.
The store manager, a woman named Angela Brooks, shook her head.
“Only Warren.”
“Not even you?”
“No.”
Teresa looked through the glass window.
The office was neat.
Too neat.
There were no papers scattered across the desk.
No open files.
No personal items out of place.
It looked like nobody had worked there in weeks.
But Teresa knew something.
People who had something to hide rarely left a mess.
They cleaned.
They organized.
They removed anything that could tell their story.
“Where are the financial records?” Teresa asked.
Angela looked confused.
“Which records?”
“The accounting files.”
“We keep everything digitally.”
“Who manages the system?”
Angela hesitated.
“Warren.”
Teresa wrote that down.
Then she looked toward the security cameras.
“Who controls those?”
Again, Angela hesitated.
“Warren.”
By eight thirty, Teresa had enough information to request a full financial investigation.
But before she left, she noticed something.
A small trash bin beside Warren’s desk.
Inside were pieces of paper.
Not random papers.
Shredded documents.
She carefully collected them.
At the hospital, Charles sat beside Lillian’s room while investigators worked around him.
He had barely slept.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Warren’s face.
Not the face of a suspect.
The face of his friend.
The man who had stood beside him when his father died.
The man who had helped him pay medical school expenses when Charles’s family could not afford it.
The man who had promised him decades earlier that they would always protect each other.
Charles hated the possibility that all of those memories could exist alongside something terrible.
A person could be kind for forty years.
A person could also hide something for forty years.
His phone rang.
It was Teresa.
“What did you find?”
“Your friend has been moving money.”
Charles stood up.
“How much?”
“More than Lillian estimated.”
“How much more?”
“Almost four million dollars.”
Charles stared at the floor.
“Where did it go?”
“That’s the problem.”
Teresa paused.
“The money moved through several accounts.”
“Can you trace it?”
“We’re working on it.”
Charles walked toward the window.
Outside, Minneapolis was beginning another ordinary morning.
Cars moved through the streets.
People walked into coffee shops.
Children went to school.
The world continued as if nothing had happened.
“Teresa.”
“Yes?”
“Lillian said Warren had someone helping him.”
“I know.”
Charles turned.
“You know?”
“We found something else.”
“What?”
“A phone number.”
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Charles felt his chest tighten.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the shredded documents from Warren’s office.”
A long silence followed.
“Send it to me.”
“No.”
Charles frowned.
“No?”
“You’re too close to this.”
“I need to know.”
“You’re emotionally involved.”
Charles looked back toward Lillian’s room.
“Yes.”
He paused.
“But so is she.”
Teresa did not answer immediately.
Then she said:
“I’ll send it.”
Twenty minutes later, Charles received a photograph of the number.
He recognized the area code.
But not the person.
He searched his memory.
Nothing.
Then Lillian’s words returned.
She had said she saw Warren talking to someone.
Someone who knew about Charles.
May you like
Someone who could make people believe it was an accident.
Charles walked back into Lillian’s room.
