Chapter 8 - The Woman Wade Was ProtectingDetective Ortiz traced the call to a prepaid phone that went dead less than thirty seconds after Wade disconnected.
Sarah replayed his words again and again.
I was protecting her.
Linda had helped bury Emma.
What exactly could Wade be protecting Linda from?
Daniel offered the obvious answer.
“Prison.”
But Ortiz wasn't satisfied.
“If Wade is telling the truth, Linda may be deeper in the financial side than we've assumed.”
Investigators spent the next several hours digging into her finances.
What they found changed the shape of the case.
Linda Miller wasn't wealthy.
At least she wasn't supposed to be.
Her late husband had left a modest retirement fund and a paid-off townhouse.
Yet over eighteen months, almost $620,000 had passed through accounts connected to Linda.
Smaller deposits.
Transfers.
Cash withdrawals.
None large enough to trigger immediate scrutiny.
The source companies were subcontractors that had done business with Daniel's company.
Daniel stared at the records.
“I approved some of these vendors.”
“Are they real?” Ortiz asked.
“Yes. Or I thought they were.”
Several were legitimate companies with fraudulent invoices inserted among real ones.
Someone who understood Daniel's accounts had been siphoning money.
Sarah knew before anyone said it.
“Linda.”
Daniel shook his head.
“My mother wasn't involved in my business.”
“But she knew your passwords.”
“No.”
“Did she?”
He hesitated.
Years earlier, when Daniel started the company, Linda had helped with basic bookkeeping.
For almost two years.
She knew how invoices were structured.
She knew the vendors.
She knew Daniel's signature.
Wade had access to companies capable of submitting fake bills.
Together, they had everything they needed.
Ortiz leaned back.
“This affair may have started as something else.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Fraud?”
“Or the affair came first and the fraud followed.”
Sarah didn't care which.
But one question remained.
“Why keep Emma alive for more than a day?”
Ortiz nodded.
“If they truly intended to silence her, there were easier opportunities.”
Sarah hated hearing the sentence.
“But they held her.”
“Because they wanted something.”
“The drive.”
“Probably.”
“And once they found it?”
“Something changed.”
Emma had told them Linda switched drives.
Perhaps Linda realized Emma's recording gave her leverage over Wade.
Maybe the two criminals turned against each other.
Sarah returned to Emma's room after midnight.
Her daughter slept.
Daniel sat in a chair beside the bed.
“You should go home,” Sarah said.
“So should you.”
“I can't.”
“Neither can I.”
Sarah sat across from him.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Daniel said, “I keep seeing her hair.”
Sarah looked at Emma.
“She loved her hair.”
“I know.”
“She cried when I cut two inches last summer.”
“I know.”
“And your mother—”
“I know.”
Sarah looked at him sharply.
“Stop saying that.”
Daniel fell silent.
“You don't know,” Sarah whispered. “Neither of us knows what she felt in that chair.”
His eyes filled.
“No.”
“We were upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty feet away.”
He lowered his head.
Sarah hated him for telling Linda about his suspicions.
She hated herself for attending the dentist appointment.
Neither feeling was rational.
Both were real.
At 1:18 a.m., Ortiz returned.
“We found Linda's townhouse security records.”
“What?”
“Repairs were supposedly why she was staying with you.”
“Yes.”
“There were no repairs.”
Daniel frowned.
“What?”
“The building manager says there was never any plumbing damage.”
Sarah stared.
“She lied so she could move into our house.”
Ortiz nodded.
“Three weeks ago.”
Exactly when Daniel had begun questioning the company's accounts.
Linda hadn't moved in because she needed somewhere to stay.
She had moved in because Daniel was getting close.
“To spy on him,” Sarah whispered.
“Possibly.”
Daniel looked physically sick.
“My own mother.”
Ortiz continued.
“We also found a storage unit rented under one of Linda's accounts.”
Police searched it before sunrise.
Inside were boxes of copied business documents.
Fake vendor invoices.
Five burner phones.
Cash.
And photographs.
Dozens of photographs of Daniel entering and leaving his office.
Sarah picking Emma up from school.
The Miller house.
Their cars.
Their routines.
“This wasn't spontaneous,” Sarah said.
“No.”
Linda and Wade had been watching them for months.
Then an officer found something in the bottom drawer of a metal filing cabinet.
A sealed envelope.
On the front, Linda had written:
IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME, GIVE THIS TO DANIEL.
Inside was a letter.
Daniel read it at the hospital.
His hands shook.
Danny,
If you are reading this, I waited too long.
Wade is not the beginning of this.
I am.
Sarah watched Daniel's eyes move downward.
Then stop.
“What?”
He didn't answer.
“What does it say?”
Daniel handed her the page.
May you like
The next sentence read:
The first time I stole money from your company, Wade didn't even know.
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