Ownership had been transferred six months before Dad died.
To a company called TMB Holdings.
“Those are his initials,” I whispered.
Thomas Michael Brooks.
Catherine looked at me carefully.
“Did your father own TMB Holdings?”
“I don’t know.”
Samuel opened another document.
The registered manager was someone named Eleanor Price.
I knew that name too.
She had been Dad’s bookkeeper for almost twenty years.
My hands began shaking.
“Find her.”
Eleanor lived forty minutes away.
She was seventy-two and answered her door wearing gardening gloves.
The moment she saw me, she began crying.
Not mild tears.
She gripped the doorframe and sobbed.
“Oh, Natalie.”
I felt cold.
“What did my father do?”
She covered her mouth.
“He was trying to protect you.”
“From whom?”
Her eyes filled again.
“Eric.”
She invited us inside.
At her kitchen table, she told me something that made the entire world tilt.
My father had discovered suspicious withdrawals from my company nearly two years earlier.
He had traced several to shell companies.
He suspected Eric.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He wanted proof.”
“He had proof!”
“He had pieces.”
I stood so abruptly the chair scraped backward.
“He let me sleep beside that man!”
“Natalie, your father was terrified you’d confront Eric before he understood what Eric was doing.”
I stared at her.
“What was he doing?”
Eleanor looked toward Catherine.
Then back at me.
“Your father believed Eric wasn’t stealing money for himself.”
“Then for whom?”
“We never found out.”
That answer was worse.
Eleanor disappeared into another room.
When she returned, she carried a sealed envelope.
My name was written across the front in my father’s handwriting.
My knees nearly gave out.
NATALIE — IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME
I couldn’t open it.
Catherine touched my shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this now.”
“Yes, I do.”
Inside was a single sheet.
My father’s handwriting was uneven.
Nat,
If you’re reading this, I failed to finish what I started.
Eric is moving money through your company. I don’t know where it ends yet.
Do not confront him until you find Archive 07.
And please remember something.
The first lie is not always the important one.
Look at who benefits from the last lie.
Love, Dad.
I read it three times.
Then I started crying.
Not because Eric had betrayed me.
Because Dad had known.
Because he had tried to protect me.
Because I would never get to ask him what else he had discovered.
Samuel pointed to one sentence.
“Archive 07.”
The drive.
Forensics took eleven days.
Eleven days during which Eric sent exactly one message.
You are making this bigger than it needs to be.
I didn’t answer.
Marissa called six times.
I ignored the first five.
On the sixth, I answered.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I think Eric used me.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I didn’t know he was married when we met.”
I laughed.
“You sat on my sofa.”
“I know.”
“Wearing his shirt.”
“I know.”
