Chapter 2 - THE LAPTOP TOMMY TOLD HER NEVER TO OPEN
Dileia had kept Tommy’s laptop for fourteen months.
She hated herself for remembering that only after Julian left.
It sat inside a plastic storage bin beneath winter blankets, exactly where she had placed it after the funeral.
Tommy once told her:
“If anything ever happens to me, don’t open this unless someone starts asking about numbers.”
At the time, she thought grief made every sentence sound important.
Now she dragged the bin onto the floor.
The laptop required a password.
Three attempts failed.
Then Mrs. Ruth wandered into the room wearing slippers and one of Tommy’s old sweaters.
She stared at the computer.
“Thomas hates that machine.”
Dileia turned.
“Ruth?”
The older woman’s memory was unreliable, but sometimes old moments returned with brutal clarity.
“Do you know his password?”
Mrs. Ruth frowned.
“Blue train.”
Dileia froze.
Tommy had loved model trains as a boy.
She typed BLUETRAIN.
Wrong.
Mrs. Ruth shook her head.
“No. The number.”
“What number?”
“The train he broke.”
Dileia remembered a story.
Tommy once destroyed his father’s Lionel engine when he was eight.
Engine 726.
She typed BLUETRAIN726.
The laptop opened.
Dileia covered her mouth.
Folders filled the desktop.
Most encrypted.
One labeled:
DILEIA - IF I FAILED.
She clicked.
A video opened.
Tommy appeared on screen.
Alive.
Tired.
His wedding ring visible.
“Dee.”
Her knees weakened.
“If you’re seeing this, then I was right to be afraid.”
She began crying before he finished the sentence.
Tommy explained Augustus Thorne had hired him to trace money disappearing from a network of shipping companies.
At first, it looked like theft.
Then Tommy discovered the money was not leaving the empire randomly.
It was financing something.
Payments to medical companies.
Judges.
Private nursing facilities.
Shell charities.
And one neurologist.
Dileia stopped breathing.
Mrs. Ruth’s neurologist.
Dr. Malcolm Reed.
Tommy continued:
“Mom’s diagnosis may not be what we were told.”
Dileia looked toward Ruth.
Her memory had deteriorated rapidly after Tommy died.
Doctors said early dementia.
Tommy had doubted it.
He discovered someone had been paying Reed through H-17.
Why would a mafia financial scheme involve his mother’s doctor?
Then Tommy’s video ended with one warning:
“If Julian Thorne is alive when you find this, don’t assume he’s the enemy.”
A pause.
“The person stealing from him is family.”
Dileia stared.
Then another file unlocked automatically.
A photograph.
Augustus Thorne standing beside Tommy.
And between them stood a woman Dileia recognized immediately.
Mrs. Ruth.
May you like
Twenty-five years younger.
Wearing a Thorn Industries employee badge.
