Chapter 3
Dad came home just after noon.
He looked older than he had the day before.
There were deep shadows beneath his eyes, and red marks circled his wrists where the handcuffs had rubbed against his skin.
I wanted to hug him.
Instead, he stopped when he saw the broken kitchen window.
“What happened?”
“Grant came here.”
Dad’s exhaustion vanished.
He looked at Claire.
“You left her alone?”
“I arrived before he entered her room,” Claire said. “And blaming me won’t help.”
Dad turned to me.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“What did he want?”
I placed the photograph on the table.
“He wanted the key. He also left this.”
Dad stared at the picture.
His face lost all color.
Claire noticed.
“Who is Rebecca?”
Dad sat slowly.
For a moment, he seemed unable to speak.
Then he touched the young woman’s face in the photograph.
“Rebecca Mercer was Grant’s younger sister.”
“Was?” I asked.
“She died fifteen years ago.”
The kitchen became silent.
Dad folded his hands.
“At the time, Grant and I were partners. We had just started the company. Rebecca handled our bookkeeping.”
Claire pulled out a chair.
“How did she die?”
“Her car went off a bridge during a storm.”
“And what does that have to do with you?”
Dad looked toward the window.
“Rebecca called me the night she died. She said she had found irregularities in the accounts. Grant was moving money through fake vendors.”
“Just like he did yesterday,” I said.
Dad nodded.
“She wanted to meet me. I told her to bring the records to the office the next morning.”
“But she never arrived,” Claire said.
“No.”
“Did you tell the police about the call?”
“Yes. They ruled her death an accident.”
“Did Grant know she had contacted you?”
“I don’t know.”
I did not believe him.
Not completely.
Dad was holding something back.
Claire leaned toward him.
“Why didn’t you press charges when you later caught Grant stealing?”
His eyes met hers.
“Because he blamed me for Rebecca’s death.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“He said I should have met her that night. He said she would still be alive if I had.”
“So you let guilt control you,” Claire said.
“I gave him a chance to repay the money and leave.”
“And now he has come back.”
Dad picked up the photograph.
“Apparently he never really left.”
I showed him the footage from his office.
His face tightened when he saw Monica beside Grant.
But when Grant held up the pillow and pushed the key into it, Dad leaned closer to the screen.
“Pause.”
I stopped the video.
Dad pointed at the key’s paper tag.
“That handwriting belongs to Rebecca.”
A chill moved through me.
“She wrote the box number?”
“I think so.”
“But she died fifteen years ago.”
“Then whatever is in that unit has been waiting for fifteen years.”
Claire called Queen City Secure Storage.
The manager confirmed that Unit 317 had originally been rented by Rebecca Mercer.
After Rebecca’s death, the payments continued through automatic withdrawals.
The account eventually closed, but someone paid the balance in cash and transferred the unit to M. Reynolds.
Monica.
“How did my mother get control of it?” I asked.
Dad closed his eyes.
“Grant.”
An hour later, Monica’s attorney emailed the protective order.
Dad was forbidden from contacting her or entering the condo she claimed as her temporary residence.
The filing described him as violent and unstable.
It also described me as a troubled adult daughter with a history of emotional illness.
Monica had included records from my emergency-room visit after the panic attack.
I read the paragraph twice.
Then I pushed the papers away.
“She used my medical records.”
Dad reached for my hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t give them to her.”
“But I didn’t protect you from her.”
Claire continued reading.
“She is asking the court for temporary control of the house and both company accounts.”
“She stole from one of those accounts,” I said.
“We have evidence of that. But the transferred money has already moved again.”
“Where?”
“Overseas.”
Dad stood abruptly.
“Our workers need to be paid.”
“I know,” Claire said.
“I have forty-three employees.”
“I know.”
“I can’t tell forty-three families that my wife and her boyfriend stole their paychecks.”
His voice broke.
I had never heard that sound from him.
Dad had spent twenty-six years building Hartwell Construction.
He remembered every employee’s birthday.
He attended their children’s graduations.
Now Monica had not only betrayed him.
She had placed all of them in danger.
I opened my laptop.
“There may be more footage.”
We searched through weeks of recordings.
Most clips showed an empty office.
Then, twelve days earlier, Monica entered with a woman wearing blue medical scrubs.
The woman placed a letter on Dad’s desk.
Monica handed her cash.
Claire enlarged the image.
“That’s probably the person who created the pregnancy letter.”
Dad stared at the screen.
“I recognize her.”
“Who is she?”
“Paula Reed. She works at Monica’s doctor’s office.”
I searched the name online.
Paula’s public profile showed pictures of her family, her dog, and a fundraising page.
Her husband needed kidney surgery.
The fundraiser had received a large anonymous donation four months earlier.
The exact week Monica announced her pregnancy.
“She paid Paula,” I said.
Claire nodded.
“That can help us prove fraud, but we need Paula to admit it.”
Dad’s phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
“It’s Monica.”
“You cannot answer,” Claire warned.
The call stopped.
A voicemail arrived.
Claire put the phone on speaker.
Monica’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Daniel, I know you’re angry. I know mistakes were made. But Grant has the company money, and he won’t return it unless Lily gives him the key. This has gone too far. Meet me tonight at St. Matthew’s parking lot. Come alone, and we can fix everything.”
The message ended.
Dad immediately reached for his coat.
Claire blocked him.
“You have a protective order.”
“She asked me to meet her.”
“And she may record only the part where you violate the order.”
“We can’t do nothing.”
“We won’t. I’ll contact the police.”
“The same police who arrested me?”
“The police arrested you because you admitted striking her.”
Dad looked away.
Claire softened her voice.
“I’m your attorney, Daniel. Let me do my job.”
He sat again.
I replayed Monica’s message.
There was noise behind her voice.
A train horn.
Metal striking metal.
And a man saying something I could not understand.
“She isn’t at a condo,” I said.
Claire listened again.
Dad recognized the sound.
“That’s the freight yard near our old warehouse.”
We gave the message to Detective Elena Ruiz, the officer assigned to the break-in.
She agreed to drive past the warehouse, but she ordered us to remain home.
Twenty minutes later, she called.
The warehouse was empty.
A chair sat in the center of the floor.
Rope lay beside it.
Someone had written a message on the wall.
BRING THE KEY BEFORE FRIDAY.
Monica had not asked Dad to meet because she wanted peace.
Grant had either forced her to make the call, or she had helped him prepare another trap.
That evening, the court froze the remaining company assets.
Dad borrowed money against his retirement account to cover payroll.
He did it without hesitation.
“I can rebuild money,” he said. “I can’t rebuild people’s trust.”
At nine, I received a text from an unknown number.
It contained a video.
Monica sat in a dark room.
Her hands were tied behind her back.
A bruise covered one side of her face.
“Lily,” she whispered, staring into the camera, “Grant knows you have the key. Give it to him. Please.”
The camera moved closer.
Grant’s voice came from behind it.
“Tell her what happens if she calls the police.”
Monica began to cry.
“He’ll release the recording.”
“What recording?” I asked the screen.
As if he had heard me, Grant turned the camera toward himself.
He smiled.
Then he said, “The recording that proves Daniel Hartwell killed my sister.”
The video ended.
Dad stood behind me.
He had heard every word.
I turned around.
“Did you kill Rebecca?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
But his eyes dropped.
“Then what is on the recording?”
He walked to the window.
His shoulders bent beneath a weight I could not see.
Finally, he whispered, “The last argument Rebecca and I ever had.”
“What did you say to her?”
May you like
Dad turned back.
“I told her that if she exposed Grant, she would destroy all of us.”
