Chapter 5
“What did she find?” I asked.
Eddie handed me the envelope.
Inside were copies of invoices.
Equipment purchases.
Repairs.
Consulting fees.
Ordinary descriptions attached to strangely large numbers.
“What am I looking at?”
“Payments we never authorized,” Eddie said.
“Someone was using your accounts?”
“We think so.”
“Your uncle?”
Dustin nodded.
“And Marcy discovered it?”
“Yes.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
“About ten weeks ago.”
That was almost exactly when she had begun changing.
“When she found it,” Dustin continued, “she wanted to report everything immediately.”
“And you stopped her.”
“I told her to wait until we understood what we had.”
“So you frightened her.”
“I tried to warn her.”
The distinction mattered less to me than it apparently did to him.
“You told a woman you supposedly care about that your uncle could hurt her family.”
His expression hardened, but not with arrogance this time.
“I told her that my uncle has spent years getting people to do what he wants without ever making an obvious threat. He talks about mortgages. Jobs. Contracts. He reminds you how dependent everybody is on somebody else.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is. But it wasn’t mine.”
I thought of Marcy at our kitchen table.
He said nobody can protect me from them.
Not him.
Them.
Had I filled in the rest?
My phone buzzed.
My wife.
For one wild second, I was afraid to answer.
“Linda?”
“She’s awake.”
Every muscle in my body loosened.
“How is she?”
“Doctor says the scan looks good. They want to watch her a few more hours, but she’s talking normally.”
I closed my eyes.
“Can I speak to her?”
“She’s asking for you.”
I turned away from Dustin.
When Marcy’s voice came through the phone, it was smaller than usual but steady.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“Where are you?”
I didn’t answer quickly enough.
“Oh no.”
“Marcy—”
“You went there.”
“I needed answers.”
May you like
“Dad, please tell me you didn’t do anything.”
That hurt more than I expected.
