Chapter 9: The Original Ledger
Ruiz didn’t look away from the ICU doors when she answered Richard.
“Which shop?”
“The one on Mason Road.”
“You said you didn’t know where the ledger was.”
“I don’t.” His gaze flicked to me. “Dean does.”
That was enough.
Ruiz was already moving. Samuel fell in beside us, backpack bumping his hip as we crossed the hospital parking lot. I looked back once. Richard stood under the white corridor lights, still as a man waiting to be judged.
The restoration shop sat beyond a row of shuttered businesses, its sign swinging crookedly above a darkened front window. A band of light showed beneath the service door.
Samuel crouched by the alley entrance.
“Fresh,” he said.
Two sets of tire marks cut through the grit behind the building. One ended near the loading bay. The other curved around the corner, where a dark van was parked with its engine off.
Ruiz drew her weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
The words landed like a hand on my chest. My body wanted to move ahead, to put myself between danger and everyone else. But Sophia was in a hospital bed because too many people had decided they knew best.
I stayed behind Ruiz.
She pushed the service door. It opened an inch, then stopped against something heavy.
“Dean?” she called.
No answer.
Samuel glanced toward the street. “If he’s in there, he knows we’re here.”
Ruiz leaned her shoulder into the door. Whatever blocked it shifted with a scrape, and the opening widened enough for us to slip through.
The shop smelled of sawdust and paint thinner. Worktables stood under hanging lamps; a half-restored dresser lay belly-up on sawhorses. A scatter of papers covered the concrete near the back hall. Someone had stomped through them, leaving dark shoe marks across invoices and handwritten notes.
“Clearing out,” Samuel murmured.
Ruiz kept her weapon lowered but ready. “Don’t touch anything.”
I studied the mess. Paper had been thrown aside, but a narrow strip of dust along the wall remained undisturbed. It ended at a gray door with a steel hasp.
“The records room,” I said.
The door had been locked from the outside. Beside it, a metal cabinet stood open, its shelves stripped bare except for a pair of bolt cutters and a roll of packing tape.
Ruiz looked at the cutters, then at me.
“I’ll do it.”
The hasp snapped with a sharp metallic crack.
Inside, there was just enough space for three people to stand. Filing boxes crowded the shelves from floor to ceiling. The air was close and sour, as if the door hadn’t been opened in days. Samuel pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight.
Ruiz began photographing the room.
I moved carefully between the boxes, reading labels. Payroll. Estimates. Equipment. Then a stack of binders with dates written along their spines. One had been shoved behind a warped panel at the back of the shelf.
“Lena.”
Ruiz looked up. “Don’t remove it yet.”
I pointed to a slim ledger tucked beneath the binder. A receipt was folded around it, the paper softened at the creases. There were more beneath it—bank slips, cashier’s checks, transfer confirmations.
Ruiz photographed the stack where it lay.
Then she nodded.
I eased the ledger free.
The first pages looked ordinary: dates, job numbers, expenses. Then I saw Sophia’s name. Again and again, beside loan numbers and guarantees. The same name appeared beside payments into the business, then beside transfers out—money routed through one account, then another, until it vanished under notes that looked like construction costs.
Samuel leaned in, his face tight.
“That’s her handwriting?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The entries weren’t all in one hand. Some were neat, some rushed. But the columns told a story no single signature could: money had been borrowed against guarantees carrying Sophia’s name and diverted in repeated payments.
Ruiz photographed each open page. The camera clicked steadily in the small room.
I found another receipt tucked into the spine. It showed a transfer from a business account to a personal one. Under the account number, someone had written: “S. Walker guarantee.”
A pulse beat hard in my throat.
“She knew,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I meant. That Sophia had found this? That she’d been afraid? That she had kept looking even after the people closest to her told her to stop?
“She was trying to prove it,” Samuel said.
The shop door banged open.
Ruiz turned toward the hall. “Police. Stay where you are.”
Footsteps crossed the concrete. Unhurried. Then a metallic clink.
A can being set down.
The sharp, sweet stink of solvent drifted through the doorway.
Dean appeared at the end of the hall, his sleeves rolled up. He looked first at Ruiz’s weapon, then at the open records room.
His expression settled on the ledger in my hands.
“Well,” he said. “You found it.”
“Step away from the solvent,” Ruiz ordered.
Dean lifted both hands. “It’s for the varnish.”
“That’s not what you brought it for.”
His eyes stayed on me. “You should’ve left this alone.”
I felt the old, familiar surge—the body’s brutal certainty that a threat could be solved by closing distance and hitting harder. Dean was close enough. The door was narrow. One shove, and I could be on him before he reached the can.
Then I looked down at the ledger.
Sophia’s name ran down the page in black ink.
I shifted the book against my chest and stepped back, putting the evidence behind me rather than charging toward Dean.
Ruiz moved into the hall. “Hands where I can see them.”
Dean obeyed for half a second. Then he drove his shoulder into the shelving outside the room.
Boxes toppled. Paper burst across the floor. Ruiz lunged to keep the shelf from falling into Samuel, and Dean darted past her.
He reached for the ledger.
I twisted away. His fingers caught my sleeve, yanking me into the doorframe. Pain flashed down my arm. The ledger slid against my ribs, but I kept hold of it.
“Let go!” Ruiz shouted.
Dean grabbed at the book again.
I could have struck him. Instead, I planted my boots and turned my body so his hands met my shoulder, not the ledger. He slammed me into the wall. The air punched out of my lungs.
Samuel seized Dean’s jacket from behind. Ruiz drove him away from me, and the three of us stumbled into the narrow hall.
The can of solvent sat on its side near the worktable. A clear line ran across the concrete, catching the overhead light.
For one suspended second, no one moved.
Dean backed toward the loading bay. Ruiz stepped between him and the exit. Samuel stood behind us, breathing hard. My hands shook around the ledger. I didn’t know if it was anger or the effort of not giving Dean what he wanted: a reason to make this about me.
Dean glanced at Ruiz, then at the service door.
May you like
His face changed. The uncertainty vanished. He moved into the doorway and blocked the only exit.
“You should’ve stayed overseas, Ethan.”
