Chapter 15 - The Second Copy
Amelia was furious when I told her.
“Taking me with her how?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know.”
She paced the rental house living room with one hand around a mug she wasn’t drinking from.
“No more half-truths, Daniel. Not from your family. Not from the police. Not from you trying to protect me.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“You were going to Cape Mercer.”
I said nothing.
Her eyes narrowed. “Without telling me.”
“That’s different.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She put the mug down.
“I spent days locked in rooms because people decided they knew what I could handle. Don’t become one of them.”
That stopped me.
“You’re right.”
She nodded once.
Then she said, “There’s another copy.”
I stared at her.
“Of the audit?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She walked to Noah’s backpack.
My heart thudded.
She unzipped the front pocket and removed a laminated dinosaur drawing.
Behind the drawing, sewn into the fabric lining, was a microSD card.
“You put evidence in our son’s backpack?”
“Before I knew they would threaten him. It was the one thing Eleanor never touched because she thought kid stuff was beneath her.”
I wanted to be angry.
Instead, I laughed.
It came out broken and exhausted.
Amelia smiled for the first time since we found her.
“Your father suggested it.”
“Of course he did.”
The card contained scanned invoices, internal emails, account transfers, and a video recorded in Dad’s study.
In the video, Dad looked thin and gray, but his eyes were clear.
“If Daniel is watching this,” he said, “then the truth came too late.”
I couldn’t breathe.
He named Michael’s transfers.
Diane’s shell vendors.
Mother’s cover-up.
Then he looked directly into the camera.
“And if Eleanor claims I was confused, check the blood work from April 9.”
The video ended.
Amelia whispered, “What happened April 9?”
I remembered.
May you like
Dad had collapsed at breakfast.
Mother had refused an ambulance for nearly forty minutes.
