Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Van
I walked out through the catering dock with my shoulders square and my heart trying to punch through my ribs.
A white delivery van waited beside the hedge. My best friend, Jo Park, lowered the passenger window. "You look like you fought a very expensive flamingo."
"I won. Drive."
She started the engine. The rearview mirror showed two black SUVs rolling around the far corner of the mansion.
"Please tell me that's not for us," Jo said.
"It's not for us."
"You're lying badly."
We cut across the servants' parking lot and slipped through the gate before the SUVs reached it. Jo had worked as an investigative producer before a local station fired her for refusing to soften a story about a donor. She had wired the mansion screen through a perfectly legal presentation link. I had been the dangerous part of the plan.
"The document is out," she said. "Clips are already everywhere."
"Conrad handed me a key. B-14."
Her smile vanished. "Mara. Where did you get that?"
"From him. Why?"
"Because your mother gave me a list of things I was never supposed to let you find. B-14 was at the top."
I stared at her. "You've been talking to my mother?"
"She called me when you started digging. She was scared."
"You should've told me."
"I know."
An SUV appeared in the mirror. Jo turned hard onto a narrow side street. A trash bin went flying when we clipped the curb. My phone, returned by a sympathetic busboy at the dock, lit up with a call from an unknown number.
"Mara Reyes?" a man's voice asked when I answered.
"Who's this?"
"Adrian Vale. I got your number from the staffing agency. I need to speak with you."
"Ask your fiancee."
"I did. She told me your father was a criminal."
"And you believed her?"
"No. That's why I'm calling. The signature on that page isn't the part that scares me."
He inhaled shakily. "My company processed a payment last night for a Bellwether settlement account. It was opened three weeks ago. Mara, according to the account records, your father authorized the payment."
May you like
"My father died eleven years ago."
"I know," Adrian said. "The bank says he signed it yesterday."
