Chapter 6 - Hannah’s Last Shift

The next morning, Noah met Evelyn at a diner halfway between the estate and Fort Drum. Lily sat in a booth building a fortress from sugar packets while a waitress slipped her an extra pancake.

Noah spread photographs across the table. Hannah at her nursing graduation. Hannah painting their first apartment. Hannah holding newborn Lily, exhausted and radiant. Evelyn lingered over the last image longer than she meant to.

“She knew something,” Noah said. “In the weeks before the crash, she kept asking about foundation payments. She said veterans she had treated were sleeping in cars while the Whitmore Foundation claimed it had housed them.”

“Why didn't she tell me?”

“She tried. Your office said you were overseas and unreachable. Then she said she'd wait until she had proof.”

Noah slid over a receipt from a storage facility. Hannah had rented a unit two days before the crash under her maiden name.

“We went there yesterday. Somebody cleaned it out months ago.”

“Who had access?”

“A trustee of her estate. Arthur appointed himself while I was grieving. I didn't know I could challenge him.”

Evelyn set down her coffee. Noah didn't need a lecture about what he should have done. He needed someone willing to act now.

Dana arrived with an exhausted expression. “The accounting trail is worse. The foundation billed donors for forty-eight veteran apartments. Some exist. Some were never built. Two addresses are empty lots.”

“Can you recover the money?” Noah asked.

“That's the goal, but the process won't be quick.”

Lily looked up. “Daddy, does this mean Mommy gets her house?”

Noah's expression crumpled so briefly that only Evelyn saw it.

“No, baby. Mommy's not coming back.”

Lily returned to her pancakes. “I know. I just thought she'd be happy if other people had one.”

Dana's phone rang. She listened, thanked the caller, and turned her screen toward Evelyn. Investigators had found Hannah's private email draft from the night before her crash.

The subject line read: IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME.

The body contained a single address and a warning.

Don't trust the person wearing Caleb's name.

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Evelyn read it twice.

“Maybe,” Dana said, “the man you saw isn't your brother after all.”