Chapter 3 - The Husband Who Came Home From "Munich"
Adrian's car turned into our driveway at 9:23 that night. I know the exact time because I was watching the security feed.
At six he had texted: Flight delayed, total nightmare. Finally boarding. Love you.
At 7:40: Landed. Wrecked. Heading to the hotel.
At 8:15: Early meetings tomorrow. Miss you already.
He had never left the city.
Three months earlier he'd insisted we upgrade the house security and move all the admin rights to his name, because — his words — "you always lose the passwords."
He wasn't wrong. I do lose passwords.
But I remember warrants. I remember subpoenas. I remember how people behave when they're certain nobody is watching. And on my way home from the airport, I'd stopped by the company that installed our system — the one owned by my cousin.
Adrian had apparently forgotten that too.
When he came inside, I was sitting in the dark of the library. He crossed the front hall quietly. No suitcase. No briefcase. He went upstairs, stayed four minutes, and came back down with a black duffel.
He went into the office. The lock clicked.
A minute later the little camera my cousin had tucked behind the bookshelf showed my husband crouched at the floor safe. He pulled out a bundle of documents. A passport. Three stacks of cash — thirty thousand, maybe more.
Then his hand went deeper, and came back holding something I had never seen in my life.
A second phone.
He powered it on.
My own phone buzzed. Diane.
"What," I whispered.
"I found something."
"So did I. A burner."
"Mine's better." Keys clicking on her end. "Renata Voss has no children. She flew in with that boy, but she is not his mother."
"Then who is?"
"Working on it. But there's more. Ironvale filed a confidential financing statement three weeks ago — against three Cross Aviation subsidiaries. All three report directly to Adrian. And somebody inside certified the collateral schedules."
"Who?"
"Sending it now."
The document opened on my screen. At the bottom was an electronic authorization.
Not mine.
My father's.
Walter Vance had built the company out of a tin hangar with six employees and one Air Force contract, back when it was still called Vance Aeronautics. After he died, Adrian talked the board into renaming it Cross Aviation — for the investors, he said. I let it happen. Sitting there in the dark, that decision suddenly felt like watching someone spray-paint over a headstone.
"Diane," I said. "My father has been dead for eight years."
"I know."
"Then someone is forging dead men now."
"No." The word came out too fast.
"What do you mean, no?"
"The digital certificate tied to Walter Vance's authorization is active. It was reauthenticated yesterday afternoon — in person, at a biometric identity center in Wilmington."
"That's not possible. He was cremated."
"I remember. Which means either their system is compromised—" she paused "—or someone who looks enough like your father passed a live facial scan."
On the camera, Adrian was photographing pages with the burner. Then he stopped. The phone was ringing.
He answered. I turned the audio up.
"Yeah." A long silence. "No, she doesn't know." Another. "I said she doesn't know." His voice went low and hard. "Tomorrow's too soon. Because she's still my wife."
A pause.
Then my husband said something that stopped my breath.
"If you hurt Addie, there's no deal."
He listened.
"No. You listen to me. The shares are enough. She walks away alive, or I burn all of it."
He hung up and stood there, not moving. Then he threw the phone against the wall hard enough to crack it.
"Diane," I whispered. "You heard that?"
"Yes."
Adrian was planning to rob me. Divorce me. Bury me in debt.
And somebody else wanted me dead — and my husband had just threatened them to keep me alive.
"He's not the one running this," I said.
"I was getting there."
"He's working for someone above him."
"Yes."
"Who?"
May you like
"That," Diane said, "is what I'm going to find out."
Upstairs, a door opened. I ended the call.
