Chapter 6 - LAURA’S INSURANCE POLICYLaura Mitchell had understood Grant better than I had.
That truth hurt, but I accepted it.
She knew he collected leverage.
So she collected evidence.
For eighteen months before she disappeared, Laura copied company records.
Invoices.
Bank statements.
Internal emails.
Property photographs.
Insurance estimates.
Contracts.
She stored them on an encrypted drive and mailed it to a college friend in Arizona with instructions not to open the package unless Laura contacted her.
After Grant forced Laura to leave Ohio, she retrieved it.
Then hid.
When detectives found her, she finally surrendered the drive.
The financial investigation exploded.
Mercer Restoration had submitted fraudulent claims totaling millions of dollars over several years.
Not every project.
That was the brilliance of it.
Most jobs were legitimate.
Grant mixed fraud into a healthy business.
A damaged roof became two damaged roofs.
A kitchen fire became structural damage.
A water leak became mold remediation.
Sometimes Grant bribed subcontractors.
Sometimes he created documentation after the fact.
Sometimes he allegedly sabotaged properties to justify larger repairs.
Laura had found spreadsheets tracking payments to people identified only by initials.
One set appeared repeatedly.
CR.
Cassandra Reed.
At first investigators assumed it meant money received from Cassandra.
Then Laura explained.
“CR wasn’t Cassandra,” Brooks told me.
“What was it?”
“Claims reviewer.”
An insurance employee.
Grant had someone on the inside.
That expanded the investigation again.
Search warrants were executed at three offices.
Two people were arrested.
A claims adjuster resigned and hired a criminal-defense attorney.
Grant remained in jail because the new charges convinced the court he presented a flight risk.
For me, the world became strangely quiet.
The immediate terror receded.
Then everything I had avoided feeling arrived at once.
Nightmares.
Panic when someone knocked.
Fear of dark parking lots.
Guilt.
Anger.
I started therapy.
At my first appointment, I told Dr. Elaine Foster the thing I was most ashamed of.
“I miss him.”
She didn’t look surprised.
“I hate that.”
“What do you miss?”
I almost said nothing.
Then I answered truthfully.
“The mornings when he made pancakes.”
“The version of Grant who made pancakes?”
“Yes.”
“The man who remembered how you liked your coffee?”
“Yes.”
“The person who sat with you when your father died?”
I nodded.
“Those experiences were real.”
That startled me.
“I thought you’d say they were manipulation.”
“Some may have been. Some may not. Human beings are complicated.”
“So I’m allowed to miss him?”
“You’re allowed to feel whatever you feel.”
“I don’t want that to mean I should go back.”
“A feeling isn’t an instruction.”
I wrote that in Rachel’s notebook.
A feeling isn’t an instruction.
Three weeks after the ER, I underwent surgery to repair my orbital fracture.
Hannah sat beside my bed.
When I woke, groggy and nauseous, my first question was apparently:
“Did I text Grant?”
Hannah laughed until she cried.
“No.”
“Good.”
“You also asked the anesthesiologist if he was married.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“Was he?”
“Emily.”
Humor returned in small pieces.
So did normal life.
I started freelance design again.
My first client was a local bakery.
The owner needed new packaging.
The project paid only $900.
When the deposit appeared in an account with only my name on it, I stared at the screen for five minutes.
My money.
Not much.
Mine.
I called Hannah.
“I got paid.”
She screamed louder than when I graduated college.
Meanwhile, Laura returned to Ohio under protection.
She asked to meet me.
Investigators initially discouraged it, concerned we might affect each other’s testimony.
Eventually, after formal interviews were complete, they allowed us to speak with attorneys present.
Laura looked older than I remembered.
Not physically.
In the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately.
“For what?”
“I came to your house.”
“I remember.”
“I should’ve told you.”
“Would I have believed you?”
She hesitated.
“No.”
“Then stop apologizing.”
She smiled sadly.
“You sound like your sister.”
“That’s becoming a problem.”
Laura laughed.
Then her face changed.
“He talked about you.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did he say?”
“Grant complained that you were becoming difficult.”
“Difficult?”
“You were asking about finances. Wanting to work more. Seeing Hannah again.”
I hadn’t realized Grant noticed.
“He knew you were changing.”
“Apparently.”
Laura leaned forward.
“That’s why I emailed Hannah.”
“You thought he would hurt me?”
“I knew he was preparing something.”
“The envelope.”
She nodded.
“I saw him assembling it.”
My throat tightened.
“What did he plan?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Laura.”
She looked away.
“Tell me.”
“He asked me how quickly debt could destroy someone’s credit.”
My hands turned cold.
“He asked whether a spouse could be implicated in tax fraud.”
I stared at her.
“And he asked how difficult it would be to convince people someone had a drug problem.”
“He was going to ruin me.”
“Yes.”
“If I left.”
“Yes.”
I expected fear.
Instead I felt anger.
Clean.
Sharp.
Useful.
For weeks I had been surviving.
Suddenly I wanted accountability.
“What does the prosecutor need from me?”
My attorney Maya warned me afterward.
“Do not build your recovery around Grant’s conviction.”
“I’m not.”
“Trials are unpredictable.”
“I understand.”
“Defendants plead. Charges get reduced. Evidence gets excluded.”
“I know.”
“Justice and healing are related, but they are not the same thing.”
I understood intellectually.
Emotionally, I still wanted the courtroom.
Grant had controlled the narrative privately for years.
I wanted him to hear my truth somewhere he couldn’t interrupt.
But the biggest development came from Cassandra Reed.
Investigators finally reconstructed her connection.
Cassandra had indeed hired Mercer Restoration after a kitchen fire.
During construction, she discovered a suspicious invoice carrying her signature.
She confronted Grant at his office.
A security-camera clip showed her entering.
There was no recording of her leaving.
Grant said she left through a rear door.
Weeks later, Cassandra disappeared while supposedly driving to Cincinnati.
Her car was found at an airport parking lot.
Police initially believed she left voluntarily.
But Laura’s drive contained an email Cassandra had sent to Grant.
If you don’t fix this invoice by Friday, I’m contacting the insurer and police.
Cassandra disappeared Thursday.
The blood in our basement was hers.
Detectives searched my house again.
Then they searched Grant’s company vehicles.
A cadaver-detection team examined two properties.
Nothing.
I tried not to imagine what Cassandra’s family had lived through for fourteen months.
Uncertainty is its own kind of violence.
Then a detective noticed a mileage discrepancy on one Mercer Restoration truck.
The company log showed the truck parked in Columbus on the night Cassandra disappeared.
GPS records showed otherwise.
It had traveled seventy-six miles north.
To a rural property near Mansfield.
A property owned by Northline Holdings.
Grant’s shell company.
Search teams arrived the next morning.
They found an old well behind an abandoned farmhouse.
Covered with heavy timber.
Fresh concrete had been poured around the top approximately one year earlier.
Detective Brooks called me before the evening news could.
“We’re searching the property.”
I closed my eyes.
“Do you think she’s there?”
“I don’t know.”
This time the uncertainty sounded different.
By sunset, investigators had removed part of the covering.
At 8:17 p.m., Brooks called again.
I didn’t want to answer.
I did anyway.
“They found remains.”
I stopped breathing.
“We don’t have identification yet.”
But we both knew.
Two days later, dental records confirmed Cassandra Reed.
The charges against Grant changed.
And so did the rest of my life.
May you like
Because the man I had shared a bed with for six years was no longer accused only of breaking my face.
He was charged with murder.
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