Chapter 13 - Seventy-Two Hours
Connor chose a parking garage beneath a closed shopping center.
Naomi refused to let me go alone.
Officers surrounded the area without revealing themselves.
I wore a recording device.
Brenda came with me.
Connor emerged from behind a concrete pillar.
For the first time in twelve years, my husband looked afraid of his own shadow.
His expensive suit was wrinkled.
He had not shaved.
He stared at me.
“Claire.”
I felt nothing when he said my name.
That surprised me most.
“Talk.”
He looked at Brenda.
“You told her?”
“Enough.”
Connor closed his eyes.
“Mom has Raymond.”
“We know.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“You don’t.”
Connor claimed Raymond had worked for Elaine since before Thomas died.
Not merely as security.
As an investigator.
A fixer.
A man willing to do things Elaine did not want connected to her name.
Connor had discovered old payments while preparing the Orion structure.
One payment occurred the week Thomas died.
“Are you saying Raymond killed your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what do you know?”
Connor pulled out a folded photograph.
It showed Raymond.
Much younger.
Standing beside Elaine outside Thomas Ward’s office building.
The timestamp was the night before Thomas died.
On the back, Thomas had written three words.
If I’m right.
Connor’s hands shook.
“I found this in Mom’s safe.”
“Why didn’t you go to police?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Because by then I was already stealing from Apex.”
There it was.
No excuse.
Only cowardice.
Connor had discovered his mother might have been involved in his father’s death.
And instead of exposing her, he continued participating in fraud because exposing her would expose him too.
“What does she want now?”
I asked.
“The missing settlement page.”
“She thinks I have it.”
“Yes.”
Connor looked directly at me.
“And she thinks your father left more evidence.”
A cold feeling spread through me.
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
Connor said Elaine believed my father kept a recording of Thomas explaining everything.
She had searched for it for years.
When I inherited the house, she thought it might be hidden there.
That explained the duplicate keys.
The staged photographs.
Maybe some of the surveillance had not been about making me look unstable.
Maybe Elaine had been searching.
“Why Friday?”
I asked.
Connor stared at the floor.
“Because the trust has a reversion review Friday afternoon.”
I had forgotten.
Every five years, the trust administrator confirmed asset control.
If I were declared incapacitated before that review, Connor could have stepped in.
If the lien triggered simultaneously, they could force an emergency restructuring.
The deadline was not arbitrary.
They had built the entire operation around it.
Seventy-two hours.
Naomi’s voice came through my hidden earpiece.
Keep him talking.
“Where’s Elaine?”
“I think the lake house.”
“Brenda said the same thing.”
Connor’s face tightened.
“She shouldn’t have brought you.”
Brenda stared.
“You asked me to.”
“No.”
Connor looked confused.
“I told you to bring the settlement page.”
Brenda went pale.
Her phone buzzed.
A message appeared from Connor’s number.
COME ALONE WITH CLAIRE.
LOCATION ATTACHED.
She stared at the real Connor standing ten feet away.
He had never sent the message.
Someone had cloned his number.
A second message arrived.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.
Then a photograph loaded.
It showed the inside of my house.
Taken seconds earlier.
My father’s safe stood open.
May you like
On the floor beside it sat Samuel Price.
His hands were tied.
