Chapter 13 - Blue Angel
“Blue Angel” was what Sarah called Henry when he was a baby.
Nobody outside the family knew it.
Nobody except Rebecca.
She had been Sarah’s college roommate.
That was the part I had spent three years pretending did not matter.
Rebecca came back into my life eleven months after Sarah died. She brought casseroles, old photographs, stories about Sarah in college. She made Henry laugh when I had forgotten how.
A year later, we started dating.
Six months ago, she moved into my house.
Now her blood was on a windshield.
“Could she have written it?” Lena asked.
Torres examined the letters.
“Possibly. We’ll test it.”
I turned to Victor.
“What does Blue Angel mean here?”
“Sarah used it as a password.”
“For what?”
“The drive.”
We went to the cemetery under police escort.
Rain had started by the time we reached Sarah’s grave.
I stood in front of her name while officers carefully searched the stone and the ground around it.
Nothing.
Then Victor pointed to the small bronze angel attached to the base of the marker.
“That.”
Torres put on gloves.
The angel twisted loose.
Inside the hollow base was a sealed plastic tube.
And inside the tube was a black flash drive.
Three years.
It had been there for three years.
We took it to the police cyber unit.
The password worked.
BLUEANGEL.
The drive contained photographs of trust documents, bank transfers, copies of Caleb’s emails, and one video recorded by Sarah herself.
Her face appeared on the monitor.
I stopped breathing.
“If Ethan is watching this,” she said, “then something happened to me.”
My hands clenched against the table.
“I found money leaving accounts connected to the family foundation. Caleb has been moving it through vendors that don’t exist. I confronted him. He told me I was confused.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“I’m not confused.”
The next file was an audio recording.
Caleb’s voice.
Then Rebecca’s.
Rebecca sounded younger, frightened.
“I won’t help you steal from Ethan.”
Caleb answered, “You already did.”
I looked at Torres.
The timestamp was two years before Sarah died.
Rebecca had been involved long before she returned to my life.
The final file was encrypted separately.
Cyber investigators cracked it after twenty minutes.
One document opened.
It was a life insurance policy.
Insured: Ethan Cole.
Beneficiary: Rebecca Shaw.
Policy value: forty million dollars.
May you like
My signature appeared at the bottom.
I had never seen it before.
