Chapter 3 - The Company Behind the Debt
No one slept.
By two in the morning, Declan’s mansion had transformed from a luxury home into something closer to a command center.
Men checked windows.
Security teams searched the grounds.
Technicians crowded around computer monitors.
Mason moved through the halls with a tablet in one hand and fury written across his face.
Caleb Morrow had vanished during an outage lasting exactly ninety-one seconds.
The outer gates had never opened.
That meant he had escaped through the service corridor.
A corridor that required an internal access code.
Someone inside Declan’s organization had helped him.
I sat at the kitchen island wrapped in a gray blanket, staring at a plate of eggs I couldn’t eat.
Declan stood across from me.
“You need food.”
“I need answers.”
“You need both.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That stopped being persuasive three fainting spells ago.”
“I fainted once.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Tonight.”
Despite everything, a laugh almost escaped me.
Almost.
I picked up the fork.
Declan poured coffee for himself.
“You knew Sophie.”
“I met her once.”
“At Raven & Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Why there?”
“She contacted one of my charitable offices.”
I stared at him.
“You have charitable offices?”
His mouth moved faintly.
“I know. Terrifying.”
I hated that he could make me almost smile when my entire life was coming apart.
“What did she ask for?”
“At first, financial help.”
“That sounds like Sophie.”
“She was embarrassed.”
“That definitely sounds like Sophie.”
Declan looked down at his coffee.
“She brought medical bills. Then, before the meeting ended, she asked me if I knew Blackwater Holdings was taking payments from people who had never borrowed from it.”
My fingers tightened around the fork.
“What did you say?”
“I told her she had to be mistaken.”
“And she proved you wrong.”
“She showed me twelve contracts.”
He paused.
“All carrying Blackwater routing numbers.”
“Did she tell you where she got them?”
“No.”
“Did she mention Caleb?”
“Yes.”
My stomach tightened.
“She said he collected payments.”
“Why didn’t you stop him then?”
Declan looked at me.
“I tried.”
“You handed everything to Julian.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Julian reported that Blackwater had been the victim of identity fraud. He claimed someone had copied company information onto fake contracts.”
“You believed him?”
“He had documentation.”
“Fake documentation.”
“I know that now.”
Anger flared through me.
“My sister was dying while everyone around you treated this like paperwork.”
His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did.
“You’re right.”
The answer disarmed me.
I had expected defensiveness.
Excuses.
Powerful men usually had endless supplies of both.
Declan had neither.
“I should have investigated personally.”
He stared into his cup.
“I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because two years ago I was trying to keep my organization from collapsing.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
He lifted his gaze.
“It’s supposed to be the truth.”
The kitchen fell silent.
Mason entered holding a laptop.
“We found Caleb’s route out.”
Declan turned.
“Who gave him access?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Mason set the laptop down.
“The code belonged to a maintenance supervisor who died eight months ago.”
I stared.
“How can a dead man’s code still work?”
“It shouldn’t.”
Mason looked toward Declan.
“Someone reactivated it yesterday.”
Declan’s jaw tightened.
“From where?”
“Finance administration.”
Julian Vane.
No one needed to say the name.
Mason pulled up a second screen.
“There’s more.”
He opened a financial report.
Blackwater Holdings had started as a property management company years earlier.
Declan’s father had created it to hold several apartment buildings.
When Declan inherited the business, Blackwater became dormant.
Except it wasn’t dormant.
Hundreds of monthly deposits had passed through one of its old accounts.
Small amounts.
Two thousand.
Three thousand.
Five thousand.
Over and over.
“How much?” I asked.
Mason hesitated.
Declan answered for him.
“Last five years?”
Mason nodded.
“Eleven point four million dollars.”
My fork slipped from my fingers.
Eleven million.
People like me had paid eleven million dollars into a company Declan claimed he didn’t know was operating.
“Where did it go?”
Mason changed screens.
“Distributed through consulting companies, debt-service firms, and cash-management accounts.”
“Who owns them?”
“We’re tracing them.”
Declan looked at the report.
“And Julian?”
“His name isn’t directly connected to any.”
“That means nothing.”
“No.”
Mason looked at me.
“Caleb’s name appears on three.”
I felt sick.
“What about Sophie?”
Mason hesitated.
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“There’s a payment to Sophie Bell.”
I stood too quickly.
The room tilted again.
Declan reached for me.
I ignored him.
“What payment?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“When?”
Mason checked.
“Six weeks before she died.”
“No.”
“Nora—”
“No. Sophie wouldn’t take money from them.”
“It may not mean what it looks like.”
“It looks like they paid her.”
Declan moved beside Mason.
“Where was it deposited?”
Mason clicked.
Then frowned.
“It wasn’t.”
“What?”
“The payment was issued as a cashier’s check.”
“Cashed?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
Mason zoomed in on the scanned endorsement.
My breath stopped.
The signature said Sophie Bell.
It wasn’t Sophie’s handwriting.
I knew my sister’s writing better than my own.
Sophie dotted her i’s with tiny circles when she was nervous.
Her capital B leaned backward.
This signature was smooth.
Professional.
Fake.
“That’s not hers.”
Mason looked at me.
“You’re sure?”
“One hundred percent.”
Declan examined the image.
“Then someone created a payment to make it look like Sophie was part of the operation.”
“Why?”
“To discredit her if she talked.”
I sat again.
The sophistication frightened me more than Caleb ever had.
This wasn’t one loan shark.
This was a system.
A machine.
Someone had built it carefully enough to survive audits, investigators, and maybe even Declan Walsh.
I thought about the blue music box.
The missing key.
The storage locker.
“What did Sophie keep in storage?”
Declan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where would she have rented one?”
“She lived near South Mercer.”
Mason started searching.
“There are fourteen storage facilities within three miles.”
“Would she have used her real name?”
“Probably.”
Mason looked doubtful.
“If she believed people were following her, maybe not.”
That sentence hit me.
“Following her?”
“You said Caleb knew about the music box.”
I nodded.
“That suggests he had access to her apartment.”
A memory surfaced.
Sophie sitting in her kitchen weeks before her death.
She had changed the lock.
I asked why.
She said the key had started sticking.
I believed her.
Another memory.
Sophie covering her laptop when I entered.
Sophie refusing to tell me why she had stopped going to the pharmacy near her apartment.
Sophie asking strange questions about whether I kept copies of important documents.
I had blamed medication.
Stress.
Fear of dying.
Maybe she had been afraid of something else.
“I need to go home.”
Declan looked at me.
“Why?”
“I have Sophie’s boxes.”
“At your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re not going alone.”
“I’ve lived there for four years.”
“Caleb knows where you live.”
“He always has.”
“Exactly.”
I hated that he was right.
Mason began making calls.
Twenty minutes later, a black SUV carried Declan, Mason, two guards, and me across Grayhaven.
Rain streaked the windows.
The city looked strangely ordinary.
Gas stations.
Closed diners.
Traffic lights changing for empty streets.
Millions of people sleeping without knowing an eleven-million-dollar theft had been hiding beneath them.
My apartment building sat above a laundromat on Franklin Street.
The front lock had been broken for months.
Declan looked at it.
“You live here?”
“I don’t need commentary.”
“I wasn’t commenting.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Mason coughed into his hand to hide a laugh.
I led them upstairs.
Apartment 3C.
My key entered the lock.
The door opened before I turned it.
I froze.
“I locked this.”
Declan moved me behind him.
Mason pulled a flashlight.
The apartment was dark.
Someone had been inside.
Drawers hung open.
Cushions had been cut.
Kitchen cabinets emptied.
Sophie’s boxes were gone.
Every single one.
I stood in the middle of the room.
Two years of photographs.
Letters.
Her favorite scarf.
Hospital bracelets she couldn’t bring herself to throw away.
Everything.
Gone.
“Why?” I whispered.
Declan looked around.
“They were searching for the key.”
A sound came from my bedroom.
Mason moved first.
He opened the door.
No one.
But something rested in the center of my bed.
The blue music box.
My mother’s music box.
The one I had believed lost for two years.
I approached slowly.
Its lid was open.
Inside was empty.
Except for a folded note.
My name was written across the front.
Not in Caleb’s handwriting.
Not Sophie’s.
I opened it.
Three words.
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.
Below that was a photograph taken less than an hour earlier.
It showed me asleep in Declan’s bed.
Someone had been inside the mansion.
Someone had stood close enough to photograph me.
May you like
And that person was still watching us.
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