Chapter 5 - THE THING I TOOK WITHOUT KNOWING
I spent the next morning trying to remember the night I left Caleb.
Fear does strange things to memory.
Some moments disappear completely.
Others stay sharp forever.
I remembered the suitcase.
The cracked rib.
The taxi driver who pretended not to notice I was crying.
And the blue coat.
I had taken Caleb’s expensive winter coat because mine was torn.
Six months later, I donated it.
At least, I thought I had.
Then I remembered something else.
The lining had been ripped.
And I had found a small metal object inside.
“A flash drive,” I whispered.
Vincent looked up.
We were sitting in the diner office.
“What?”
“I found a flash drive in Caleb’s coat.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it in a box.”
“What box?”
“My storage unit.”
Vincent was standing before I finished speaking.
Then he stopped himself.
“Do you want to go?”
The question mattered.
“Yes.”
We took my car.
Not his armored SUV.
Mine.
A ten-year-old Honda with a passenger window that made a strange whistling sound over forty miles an hour.
Vincent stared at the dashboard.
“Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Your face has.”
At the storage facility, my unit looked untouched.
Inside were the remains of my old life.
Wedding dishes.
Books.
A lamp Caleb had hated.
One box labeled MISCELLANEOUS.
I opened it.
The flash drive was beneath three Christmas cards.
Vincent didn’t touch it.
“You found it.”
“I guess.”
“No.”
He looked toward the security camera above the hallway.
“You found what someone has been willing to follow you for eleven weeks to recover.”
We took it to a cybersecurity specialist Vincent trusted.
The drive contained hundreds of encrypted financial records.
One unencrypted audio file.
Vincent played it.
A woman’s voice filled the room.
Sophia.
“If anything happens to me, this means I was right.”
Vincent stopped breathing.
The recording continued.
“Carlo is moving money through Lawson Development. Marcus found out I knew. Caleb Ward is keeping the books.”
I covered my mouth.
Sophia’s voice trembled.
“They think Dad will start a war if he learns the truth. Maybe he will.”
Then she whispered:
“Dad, if you hear this, please don’t avenge me.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
“End it.”
The recording stopped.
No one spoke.
Then the technician discovered one more file.
A photograph.
Sophia standing beside Caleb.
Caleb’s face was bruised.
Sophia was handing him the same flash drive now sitting on the desk.
On the back of the digital scan was a handwritten note.
CALEB AGREED TO HELP ME EXPOSE CARLO.
May you like
My abusive ex-husband had once tried to help Sophia.
Which meant something had happened afterward that turned him into the man I eventually married.
