Chapter 7 - Headlights in the Lot
I stared at her name for three full rings. Then I answered.
"Nora." Calm. Too calm. "Where are you?"
I looked at Ethan's note, at the dead man on the dock, at the box Victoria had ordered destroyed by eight o'clock.
"Katherine," I said. "How did you know Charles Sterling?"
Silence. Long enough that I heard her turn signal ticking.
"Listen to me very carefully. You need to walk out of that storage facility right now."
"Why?" My voice cracked. "Why do I need to leave?"
"Because Victoria doesn't just track Ethan's phone. There's a GPS tag on that box of personal papers, and she knows exactly what's in it. If she realizes you've read Charles's letters, she won't call her lawyers. She'll burn every one of us to the ground to keep it buried."
Rachel was already moving, waving Marla toward the office.
"Katherine, how do you know him?" I was walking fast down the concrete corridor, the V.W. box heavy against my chest.
"Fourteen years ago I wasn't a partner anywhere. I was a junior defense attorney." Her engine revved. "Charles Sterling came to me in secret. He'd found that Victoria had been draining the Sterling Family Foundation for years to seed her own shell companies. He was going to hand me the proof on a Monday morning. Sunday night his car went off a road by itself, and he was gone."
I hit the glass doors. Outside, Niles was black and windy, bare branches thrashing.
"I always knew it wasn't an accident. I could never prove it. She buried the records and used her banking contacts to scrub the trail." A breath. "Then years later a résumé crosses my desk. Nora Sterling. Finance. And I went cold, because I realized Ethan had rebuilt his mother's exact machine and picked you to stand in front of it. I hired you to keep you close. So I'd be there when it came down. Get in your car. I'm five minutes out with federal investigators."
The line died.
Headlights swung across the lot — hard, high, too fast. A black town car came through the open gate and slammed to a stop behind Rachel's SUV.
The door opened. Not a fixer. Not a legal team.
Victoria.
She came out into the cold with her coat flapping around her ankles, no sunglasses this time. Her eyes were hollow and wild. Ethan climbed out the passenger side and hung back by the car like he wished it would swallow him.
"Nora!" Victoria's voice tore across the wind. "Put the box down. You have no right to those things. You are tearing this family apart."
Rachel stepped in front of me, palm up. "Mrs. Sterling, back away. There's a legal hold on this property. You're interfering with a criminal investigation."
"I don't care about your holds." Another step. Every ounce of the polish I'd once tried to copy was gone. "That money paid for the life you strut around in, Nora. You think your career grew in a vacuum? You think your precious firm has clean hands? Charles was weak. He wanted to torch our name over pennies. I did what a mother does. I protected my son."
From the car, Ethan finally spoke, hoarse. "Mom. Stop. It's over."
She spun on him. "Shut your mouth, Ethan. You spineless boy. You led her right to it. You couldn't even wipe your own laptop."
"She's right about that part," I said, and stepped out from behind Rachel. The fear that had been sitting on my chest all day just lifted. I looked at the man I'd married, then at the woman who'd run him by remote control his whole life. "You put my name on a crime. You made our marriage a scene the police get to photograph. It ends tonight."
Sirens, faint, then not faint, rising off the brick.
Victoria went still. She looked at me, at the box, at the red and blue light starting to wash the buildings. For one second I thought she'd come at me. Then all the years of running seemed to catch up with her at once, and her shoulders dropped.
May you like
Four cruisers and an unmarked SUV filled the lot. Katherine Vance got out, flanked by two agents from IRS Criminal Investigation. She didn't look at Victoria. She walked straight to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
"You did well," she said. "It's done."
