I looked over. He had thought of everything in the quiet, practical way that older people often do when they’ve seen enough of life to know comfort matters most in small forms.
“Thank you,” I said.
He inclined his head. “I’ll be in the room next door.”
I hesitated. “Why are you doing this?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Because I’ve seen what happens when people ignore the signs.”
He left before I could ask more.
I didn’t sleep much. I sat on the edge of the bed with the television on low, not really watching it. Around midnight, I called my apartment from my cell phone, then hung up before voicemail picked up. I’m not sure why I did that. Maybe I wanted to hear the silence. Maybe I wanted proof that my life still existed somewhere outside that motel room.
At 2:00 a.m., I stood at the window and pulled the curtain back an inch. Daniel’s car was still outside.
So was the dark sedan.
It was parked across the street, partly hidden under a dead streetlight. My mouth went dry. He had been right.
I let the curtain fall and sat down hard in the chair by the desk. For a long time, I simply stared at the carpet. There are certain moments when denial doesn’t break all at once. It thins quietly until there’s nothing left to hold on to.
By dawn, I knew I was done pretending.
Daniel knocked on my door at 7:15. He carried two coffees in a cardboard tray and a manila envelope tucked beneath his arm.
“I thought you might be awake,” he said.
“I never really went to sleep.”
“That makes two of us.”
I stepped aside to let him in. We sat at the small table by the window. Morning light made the room look even plainer than it had at night. He slid one coffee toward me, then placed the envelope between us.
“What’s in that?” I asked.
“Enough to explain why I told you not to go home,” he said.
He opened the envelope and spread several photographs across the table. The first showed Richard outside a restaurant downtown getting into a black sedan with two men I didn’t recognize. The second showed the same car parked half a block from my apartment building. The third showed Richard standing beside Lena in a parking garage, talking to one of those men again.
I looked up slowly. “Who are they?”
“I’m still working on names,” Daniel said. “But I know one of them has done private collections work. Corporate pressure. Asset recovery. That kind of thing.”
I frowned. “That sounds like a polite way of saying something ugly.”
“It usually is.”
I picked up one of the photographs and held it closer. “When did you take these?”
“Over the last six days.”
“You followed him?”
Daniel shook his head. “I had help.”
That answer stopped me. “Help from who?”
“A retired investigator I know. Former county sheriff’s office. We worked together years ago.”
“You worked in law enforcement?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Corporate security, mostly. Transportation, fraud prevention, internal theft. Boring work most of the time.”
“Most of the time,” I repeated.
He gave the smallest hint of a smile. “Most.”
He reached into the envelope again and pulled out a stapled set of printed documents. “Take a look at page three.”
I turned to it. Numbers. Transfers. Account summaries. At first glance, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Then I saw the company names. Shell LLCs. Temporary holding firms. Short-term transfers out of one operating account and into another.
I felt a tightening in my chest. “These are Carter Logistics accounts.”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said, flipping pages faster now. “No, these are not approved distributions. I would have signed off on anything this size.”
“You didn’t,” Daniel said.
I found the authorization line. My name was on it. Or at least something meant to look like my name. I stared at the forged signature for a long second. Then another.
“He’s moving money,” I said quietly.
