Chapter 3: A Signature in the Wrong Hand
I took the long way back to the motel, cutting through streets I knew and streets I didn’t, until the dark SUV stopped appearing in my mirror.
That didn’t mean it was gone. It meant I couldn’t see it.
I left the ledger beneath my jacket when I went inside. Gaby sat on the nearer bed with Leo tucked against her shoulder, one hand cupped around the back of his head. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon glare. The room smelled of warm formula and the little packet of motel coffee I’d forgotten to throw away.
She looked at my face.
“Did Tyler tell you anything?”
“He gave me this.”
I set the ledger on the small table. Her eyes went straight to the pages, then away.
Rebecca Cole came ten minutes later carrying a thin folder and a paper cup of coffee she hadn’t touched. She didn’t waste time asking how we were holding up. She pulled a chair to the table, opened the folder, and asked me to lay the ledger beside the transfer records she’d brought.
“Tyler’s copy is incomplete,” she said. “That doesn’t make it useless.”
She ran a finger down a column of dates and stopped at a line I couldn’t make sense of. A string of numbers, Gaby’s name, and a business name in faded ink.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Rebecca turned one of her documents toward us. “Citrine Ridge Ventures, LLC.”
Gaby stared at the words.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“The same name appears in the townhouse transfer records,” Rebecca said. “That gives us a connection between these papers. It does not yet tell us what the company did, who controlled it, or where the money went.”
She said it calmly, but her thumb pressed hard against the edge of the page.
Gaby had gone very still. Leo squirmed against her, making a small, sleepy sound. She adjusted him automatically, eyes fixed on the business name.
“Was it on the papers Mason brought?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was low. “There were so many.”
Rebecca didn’t lean in. She waited.
Gaby’s gaze dropped to her hands. “I remember the table. Mason had everything spread out, but he kept the pages stacked in a certain order. He’d pull one out, point to a line, and say, ‘Here, this is for Leo’s insurance.’ Then another one was about inheritance. He said we had to get it done while the baby’s records were being set up.”
“Did you get to read them?” I asked.
She flinched, not from my question, I thought, but from what it carried.
“I was exhausted. I was feeding Leo all night. Mason said the insurance office needed the forms back right away.” She swallowed. “When I tried to look at the pages, he turned them around and told me where to sign. Sometimes he took the page back before I’d even finished.”
Rebecca glanced at the records. “Do you remember signing the company name?”
“No. I remember signing my name.”
The distinction seemed to land between us like something heavy.
Gaby looked at me. “I should have read everything.”
“You were caring for a newborn, and a man you trusted told you the papers protected your son.”
“That doesn’t change what my name is on.”
“No,” I said. “But it changes what happened.”
For a second her eyes shone. Then she looked down at Leo, as if she couldn’t afford to fall apart while he was watching.
Rebecca tapped the ledger. “This line matches the company name in the transfer records. That’s a lead. It’s not yet an explanation.”
“Can you find out who owns it?” I asked.
“I can start. But I need to verify the records, not guess from a name on a page.”
She tucked the documents back into her folder, careful not to let the paper corners bend. Gaby watched her hands.
“Do you want to take the phone out?” Rebecca asked.
Gaby blinked. “Why?”
“Because if someone is contacting you, I want to know what’s coming through.”
The prepaid phone lay near the lamp, plugged into the wall. Gaby reached for it. The screen lit her face blue. She opened the call history, then frowned.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I didn’t make this call.”
Rebecca took one step closer, but didn’t touch the phone.
Gaby turned the screen toward us. At the top of the list was an unfamiliar number, marked as a completed call early that morning. Beneath it, several entries that Gaby said she remembered seeing before were gone.
“I didn’t call anyone,” she said. “I barely touched it after you gave it to me.”
“Could you have called by accident?” I asked.
“No.”
The word came out sharp. She glanced at Leo, then softened her voice. “Sorry. No. I didn’t.”
Rebecca examined the screen from where she stood. “Don’t call the number back. Take a picture of this screen with my phone. Then leave it as it is.”
Gaby’s fingers trembled as she lifted Rebecca’s phone and captured the image.
The unknown number sat at the top of the call log like a finger pressed to a bruise. No name. No explanation. No way to tell who had touched the phone—or whether anyone had.
Rebecca’s own phone buzzed against the table. She glanced at it, then at me.
“Robert, can you step outside with me for a moment?”
Gaby’s arm tightened around Leo.
“Just outside the door,” Rebecca said. “I’m not leaving.”
I followed her into the walkway. The air smelled of hot pavement and pool chlorine. She kept her voice low.
“I don’t want to frighten her with a conclusion we can’t prove,” she said. “But someone may be paying attention to her communications. Keep everything she receives. Don’t respond to anything you can’t verify.”
Before I could answer, the motel room door opened behind us.
“Dad?”
Gaby stood there holding the phone. Her face had changed.
On the screen was a message from Derek.
Return Leo by sunset, or I’m telling the police you stole him.
For a moment, all I could hear was the air conditioner rattling inside the room.
Rebecca reached for the phone, but Gaby pulled it back.
“He’s trying to make it sound like I took my own son,” she said.
The words shook, but her grip didn’t.
“I’m not sending him back,” I said.
“I didn’t say I was.” Gaby looked past me, through the doorway, at the ledger waiting on the table. “But if I don’t, he’ll call them. And if they believe him—”
“They don’t get to decide what happened because he sent a text.”
She looked down at Leo. His small fist had closed around the collar of her shirt.
“I signed the papers,” she whispered.
“You didn’t know what they were.”
May you like
“I signed my name.”
The message remained bright on the screen between us, its deadline less than four hours away. Inside the room, Rebecca was already gathering the records. Gaby held her son close, but now she was looking at the door as if Derek might come through it himself.
