Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE IN THE DARK
Claire studied the transfer schedule until every number became painfully clear.
The consulting company was real. She had created it six years earlier for independent risk work, then left it dormant when Daniel convinced her to join his investment firm. The account should have held twelve dollars.
It had moved nineteen million.
“Who has seen this?” she asked.
“Three directors, myself, and whoever executed the transfers,” Samuel said. “Mr. Bennett claims you did.”
Claire’s chest tightened. “He named me?”
“In writing.”
Daniel had not merely replaced her. He had built an escape route through her life.
Samuel slid a second document across the table. It showed logins from Claire’s old laptop, the one Daniel had said was destroyed during their move.
“If the sale closes tomorrow,” he said, “the money disappears into private jurisdictions. If it fails, the existing irregularities become visible. Either outcome gives someone reason to make you responsible.”
“Why hire me?”
“Because the protected shareholder insisted you were the only person who would see the pattern.”
“Who is it?”
“I am not authorized to say.”
Claire touched the pendant at her throat. She had owned it for as long as she could remember, though memory before age fourteen came in broken pieces: lake water, smoke, a woman screaming, the weight of a smaller hand slipping from hers.
Her adoptive parents had called those images fever dreams from the accident.
Someone had placed the photograph in her folder. Someone knew the dreams were not dreams.
When Claire returned to her suite, the door stood slightly open.
Nothing obvious was missing. Her suitcase remained zipped. Her laptop sat on the desk. But the lining of her jewelry case had been lifted, and the photocopy of the lake picture she had made downstairs was gone.
Her phone rang.
Daniel.
“You need to leave Las Vegas tonight,” he said.
“Did you search my room?”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“By putting nineteen million dollars through my company?”
Silence.
Then his voice softened into the tone he used whenever he wanted cruelty to sound like concern.
“Claire, you’ve been under enormous emotional pressure. If you start making accusations, people may question your stability.”
“You mean you’ll make them question it.”
“The flight at ten has a seat in your name.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Then whatever happens next is your choice.”
He disconnected.
A knock came at the door.
Claire checked the peephole. No one.
On the carpet lay a child-sized envelope. Inside was a charred fragment of newspaper and a handwritten message:
The wrong girl was buried.
The clipping showed part of a headline about a twenty-four-year-old fire near Lake Mead. Only one family name remained readable.
COLE.
May you like
At that moment, the hotel fire alarm began to scream.
Smoke curled under Claire’s door.
