Chapter 5
Thomas didn’t reach for the ledger. His phone’s recorder hummed on the table, catching the tight silence in Grant’s office.
“Do you claim this book as yours?” Thomas asked.
Grant’s answer came clipped. “It’s personal.”
Melissa gave a brittle laugh. “Then let them photograph it. If it says nothing, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t say they could take it,” Grant said.
“No one’s taking it,” I said. “I’m asking what it is.”
For a moment, nobody answered. Then Melissa said, “Photograph the pages. That’s all.”
Thomas made sure she said it again for the recording. He turned each page slowly, describing when a sheet was torn or a line crossed out. I listened as the paper whispered beneath his fingers, trying to build an image of those narrow columns from the sounds alone.
At Thomas’s office, he read the entries aloud while I followed along with my finger on a printed bank statement. The dates and amounts didn’t match perfectly, but several were close enough to catch my attention: drainage work, emergency cleanup, repairs to a trust property. Beside them sat abbreviations and a vendor name I didn’t recognize.
“Some of these line up with the transfers we already found,” Thomas said. “That doesn’t prove the work was invented. It gives us somewhere to ask questions.”
“Then ask the questions,” I said. “Don’t tell me it’s fraud because the numbers look ugly.”
He paused, then made a note.
“I need the invoices, the payment instructions, and records showing what work was done,” I continued. “And I want anything we learn separated from what we’re still guessing.”
“I’ll request those records.”
“Not just request them. Tell me what you’ve actually received.”
“I will.”
His promise didn’t erase the ledger’s columns or the money missing from the trust. But it gave me something solid to hold on to: a line between suspicion and proof, and my right to insist nobody step over it for me.
One of the entries listed work at a small trust-owned property managed by a woman named Ruth Pike. Thomas called her office. Ruth was willing to meet that afternoon.
I asked Daniel to drive me.
“Of course,” he said. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No. I want to speak to her myself. You can wait outside.”
“Understood.”
The drive was quiet except for the turn signal and the soft rush of tires on wet pavement. Daniel didn’t fill the silence with reassurances. I was grateful for that, though I didn’t say so.
At Ruth’s office, I found the edge of her desk with my hand and took the chair she offered. Her voice was brisk, but when Thomas read the ledger entry aloud, it softened.
“That cleanup never happened,” she said.
I kept my hands folded in my lap. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure no crew came through my office. I was on-site that week. The storm damage was minor, and I handled the debris with the maintenance staff.”
“Could there have been work you didn’t know about?”
“There could have been,” she said. “I can only tell you what I saw and what I approved. I never approved a cleanup invoice.”
Thomas asked for a copy of her maintenance records. Ruth agreed to send them, but she wouldn’t speculate about who submitted the charge or where the money went. I respected her more for saying so.
On the way back, I replayed her words in my head. No crew came through. She had been on-site. She had never approved an invoice. Not proof of every missing dollar. Proof that at least one claimed expense didn’t match the work she knew about.
When Daniel parked outside the temporary suite Thomas had arranged, I heard him open his door.
“I can walk you in,” he said.
“I’d like that. Just to the entrance.”
He didn’t question the boundary. He took my bag only after I asked, and handed it back before opening the door.
A piece of paper lay on the floor inside.
I stopped. “Did you leave this?”
“No.”
Its edge brushed my shoe when I crouched. I picked it up and felt the clean cut of printer paper. There was no envelope, no name, no handwriting to identify the person who’d left it.
“Would you read it to me?” I asked Daniel.
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
His voice lowered as he read.
“Daniel Reyes is not your friend. He preys on women who can’t protect themselves. Keep him away from Claire.”
For a moment, the room seemed to narrow around me. The message had used my name as if the writer knew me—and Daniel’s as if they’d been watching us.
I held out my hand.
“Let me see the paper.”
Daniel placed it in my palm. I traced the edges, then turned it over. Blank. No signature. No explanation.
“Did you tell anyone where I’m staying?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I gave Thomas my number. That’s all.”
I believed he answered honestly. That wasn’t the same as knowing who had left the message, or why.
“Please stay by the door while I call Thomas,” I said. “I’m not asking you to explain yourself. I want him to hear this from me.”
“Okay.”
I called Thomas from the suite phone and read the message aloud, pausing over each word. He told me not to throw the paper away. I set it in the leather folder, beside the documents I had gathered.
May you like
The note didn’t make Daniel a predator. It didn’t make him safe, either. It was a claim, and claims had to be tested—not obeyed just because someone had delivered one with confidence.
I ran my finger along the folder’s worn edge, then found the note again. At the bottom, beneath the warning, the sender had typed the address of the suite where I was staying.
