Chapter 2 - Someone Was UpstairsI froze.
Michael heard it too.
His eyes lifted toward the staircase behind me.
The floorboard creaked again.
Not the natural settling of an old house.
A step.
Then another.
Michael moved past me before I could object.
“Stay here.”
“This is my house.”
“Then please stay alive in it.”
That shut me up.
He crossed the foyer quietly while I reached for my phone.
My first instinct was to call Daniel.
My second was stronger.
Don’t.
Not yet.
If Michael was telling the truth and someone close to us was involved, calling Daniel might warn exactly the wrong person.
Michael reached the stairs.
“Is anyone supposed to be here?”
“No.”
“Alarm?”
“Disarmed when Daniel and Lauren arrived.”
“Did you reset it?”
I realized I hadn’t.
Another sound came from upstairs.
A door closing softly.
Michael ran.
I followed despite his order.
By the time we reached the second-floor hallway, the guest-bedroom window was open.
Curtains moved in the rain-heavy wind.
Michael crossed to it.
Below us, someone in dark clothing jumped from the low porch roof and landed in my hydrangeas.
“Hey!” I shouted.
The figure ran toward the backyard.
Michael rushed downstairs.
I followed more slowly, grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen, and reached the back door seconds after he disappeared into the darkness.
The gate slammed.
A car engine roared from the alley.
By the time Michael returned, whoever had entered my house was gone.
“You recognize them?” I asked.
“No.”
“Man or woman?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
My hands were trembling now.
I hated it.
After Robert died, I had spent four years rebuilding myself into someone who could deal with insurance companies, attorneys, contractors, grief, taxes, and nights when the house felt enormous.
I refused to become helpless because someone had climbed through a window.
“What were they looking for?”
Michael looked at me.
“The same thing I was afraid you might have.”
“The photograph?”
“Maybe.”
I stared down.
It was still in my hand.
Michael took a breath.
“Check your office.”
My office was across the hall.
The door was open.
Inside, drawers had been pulled from my desk.
Papers covered the floor.
The small fireproof safe beneath the bookcase stood open.
My heart stopped.
“No.”
I dropped to my knees.
Robert’s estate documents were there.
Passports.
Birth certificates.
Some jewelry.
But one folder was missing.
A blue folder containing the original trust amendments Robert had signed two weeks before his death.
I turned toward Michael.
“They took documents.”
“Which ones?”
I told him.
His expression confirmed my worst fear.
“They knew exactly what they wanted.”
I stood.
“Now you tell me everything.”
He nodded.
We went downstairs.
I locked every door and set the alarm.
Then we sat at my kitchen table while rain tapped against the windows.
Michael didn’t look like a jealous former husband.
He looked tired.
Deeply tired.
Like a man who had spent years waiting for something bad to arrive.
He placed his hands on the table.
“Elise and I met twelve years ago in Cleveland.”
“You mean Lauren.”
“Her birth name is Elise.”
“Then why does everyone know her as Lauren Bennett?”
“Because Lauren Bennett died.”
For several seconds I couldn’t speak.
Michael opened another folder.
A newspaper clipping showed a car wreck from nine years earlier.
A twenty-four-year-old woman named Lauren Bennett had died in the crash.
Michael tapped the page.
“She was Elise’s college roommate.”
I stared at him.
“You’re telling me my son’s fiancée stole a dead woman’s identity?”
“Not immediately. It started years later.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
He gave a bitter laugh.
“It usually does.”
Michael explained that Elise had always been good with people.
Better than good.
She understood what people wanted to hear.
She could walk into a room and determine who was lonely, who needed admiration, who wanted power, and who desperately wanted to be loved.
Michael had been twenty-eight when he met her.
He worked in banking compliance.
She worked for an event company.
They married after nine months.
“At first,” he said, “I thought I had won the lottery.”
“What happened?”
“She began stealing.”
Small amounts first.
Credit cards.
Then forged loan documents.
Michael discovered accounts opened in his name.
When he confronted her, Elise disappeared.
Two weeks later, federal investigators arrived.
“She’d moved almost nine hundred thousand dollars through companies connected to me.”
“You went to prison?”
“No. Eventually they proved I wasn’t involved. But I lost my job. My house. Most of my friends.”
“And your marriage?”
“She never filed for divorce.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I couldn’t find her.”
I leaned back.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It wasn’t supposed to.”
He slid a court record toward me.
For years, Michael had petitioned to dissolve the marriage through abandonment proceedings.
Then, eighteen months earlier, he found Elise.
She was living in Chicago under the name Lauren Bennett.
Dating Daniel.
My stomach twisted.
“You’ve known about my son for eighteen months?”
“I knew she was seeing someone named Daniel. I didn’t know who he was until six months ago.”
“Why didn’t you come to us?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
I frowned.
“No one contacted me.”
“I contacted Daniel.”
I stared at him.
“He never said anything.”
“Because he never received my messages.”
Michael opened his phone.
Emails.
Six of them.
Sent to Daniel’s company address.
Each warned him privately that Lauren Bennett was using a false identity.
No replies.
Then Michael showed me something else.
The emails had been accessed.
Opened.
And deleted.
From inside Hale Development’s corporate network.
“Who has access to his account?”
“Daniel. His assistant. Sometimes our IT administrator.”
“And Lauren?”
“No.”
Then I remembered something.
Daniel’s assistant, Kevin Walsh, had taken emergency leave two months earlier.
He never returned.
Lauren had volunteered to help Daniel manage his schedule until a replacement could be hired.
She had access to his laptop.
His calendar.
Possibly his email.
I closed my eyes.
“Daniel won’t believe this.”
“He might not.”
“He loves her.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know my son.”
Michael’s expression softened.
“No. But I know Elise.”
That sentence bothered me more.
I looked at the photograph again.
“Why was she frightened?”
Michael went quiet.
“Three nights ago she called me.”
“Why?”
“She said she wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
“She wouldn’t say on the phone. She asked me to meet her outside a brewery. That’s where the photograph was taken.”
“And the embrace?”
“She had just told me something I never expected to hear from her.”
“What?”
Michael looked toward the window before answering.
“She said Daniel was going to die after the wedding.”
The kitchen became completely silent.
I heard the clock on the wall.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“You expect me to believe she confessed to planning to kill him?”
“No.”
Michael shook his head.
“She said she wasn’t the one planning it.”
“Who is?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Then why should I trust anything she said?”
“Because she gave me this.”
He reached into his jacket and removed a small flash drive.
“She said if anything happened to her, Daniel, or me before Saturday, I should take this to the police.”
“Have you opened it?”
“Yes.”
“What’s on it?”
“Bank transfers. Emails. Trust documents.”
He paused.
“And a recording.”
“Of whom?”
Michael pushed his phone toward me.
“I think you should hear it yourself.”
He pressed play.
Static.
Then Lauren’s voice.
Quiet.
Afraid.
“I did what you asked. Daniel signed the prenup. He trusts me. After Saturday, we’ll have access.”
A man answered.
His voice had been digitally distorted.
“You’re forgetting your place.”
Lauren whispered, “I want out.”
“You don’t get out.”
“I won’t hurt Daniel.”
“You don’t have to.”
Silence.
Then the man said:
“Accidents happen every day.”
The recording ended.
I could barely breathe.
Then Michael said something that turned my blood cold.
“There’s one more thing.”
He zoomed in on metadata attached to the recording.
The file had been made inside an office building.
Hale Development headquarters.
On the executive floor.
Only four people had unrestricted access after hours.
Daniel.
Lauren.
The CFO.
And Daniel’s uncle.
May you like
My husband’s younger brother.
Thomas Hale.
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