Chapter 2
Asha came back with a small speaker and a face that told me the waiting had not made anything safer.
“Mitchell’s still on the phone with the state,” she said. “The investigators are photographing and sealing everything from the box. Nobody gets to walk off with a page.”
Beyond the glass, Warden Mitchell stood with a phone pressed to his ear. His free hand was braced against the wall, as if holding the line required his whole body.
Asha set the speaker on the table. “They made a working copy of the recording. I want you to hear it with me.”
The static came first. Then Michael’s voice, thin and distant, but unmistakable.
“If Victor Shaw or Caleb Rusk comes asking, they know I have copies. If anything happens—”
A click swallowed the rest.
For a moment, I was back in our kitchen, watching Michael push his dinner around his plate and tell me there were copies somewhere safe. I had thought he was trying to frighten me into asking questions. Now I wished I had.
Asha stopped the audio.
“That’s what we have,” she said. “His voice, their names, and a warning. It may point investigators toward people who knew about the records. It doesn’t prove either man killed Michael.”
“I know.”
But knowing didn’t make the silence after his unfinished sentence easier to bear.
Through the glass, Mitchell turned his back to us and spoke more sharply into the phone. I couldn’t hear the words, only the strain in his jaw. A technician slid another page into a clear sleeve. The box sat open under bright lights, its contents arranged like someone had taken the pieces of my life apart and labeled them.
Asha leaned closer. “The state has to keep the pause in place while they review this. I’m pushing for that.”
I looked at the speaker. “And if they decide it isn’t enough?”
She didn’t answer with a promise. I was grateful for that, and hated it.
The call with Chloe came later, after Mitchell had cleared it. Grandma was with her at home, and the protection officer stayed near enough that I could hear his shoes shift on the floor.
“Mom?” Chloe said.
Her voice made the years between us feel both enormous and terribly thin.
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
“I’m with Grandma.”
“I know.”
A small pause. Then, “She found the phone.”
I closed my eyes. I could picture Chloe’s serious face, the same blue eyes I had last seen when she was little enough to fit against my chest.
Grandma spoke before I could ask anything. Her voice sounded rough.
“I should have told you when I found it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Silence answered first. Not long, but long enough to change the room around me.
“I can’t explain all of that over the phone,” she said. “And I won’t pretend I made the right choice.”
“Did you look through it?”
“Yes.”
“Was the picture all you found?”
Another pause.
“No,” Grandma said. “There was more on the phone than the picture.”
The words landed like a door opening onto a dark room. I gripped the edge of the table.
“What more?”
“I’ll tell you when I can do it properly.”
“Grandma,” Chloe murmured.
“I know, baby.” Her voice softened. “I know.”
I wanted to ask what had kept her silent for five years. I wanted to ask whether she had ever doubted me, whether she had believed the worst because it was easier than standing beside me. But Chloe was listening, and I could not make her carry the answers before Grandma was ready to give them.
“When can I talk to her again?” I asked.
“As soon as Mitchell allows it,” Asha said beside me.
Chloe heard her. “You’ll call?”
“I’ll call.”
It wasn’t the same as being able to reach for her. It was what I had.
The first independent match came near the end of the day. Asha called from the corridor, and I knew by the quickness of her breathing that something had changed.
“They found a company transaction that matches an entry in the ledger,” she said. “Same vendor, same amount, same date. They’re checking the original records now.”
“Does that mean Michael was telling the truth?”
“It means one entry matches a real transaction. That gives us something solid to follow. It doesn’t tell us who killed him.”
Hope rose anyway, small and stubborn. Before I could answer, Asha’s phone rang.
She listened without speaking. Then the color drained from her face.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Someone got into your mother-in-law’s house.”
The protection officer had been outside when the glass broke. By the time he reached the kitchen, the intruder was gone. Grandma and Chloe were unharmed, Asha said, but the house had been searched—drawers pulled out, cushions cut, Michael’s old phone missing from the charger where they had left it.
Then Grandma found the note on the kitchen table.
My name was written across the top.
May you like
Beneath it were four words.
“Stop looking,” Asha said.
