Chapter 5 - The Price of a Private Word
By morning, I was sitting in an interview room with bad coffee and eleven years of marriage coming apart in my hands.
Ortiz placed a printed still from a recovered file on the table.
It showed a folder labeled with my company’s name.
Beneath it were dates.
Hundreds of them.
“We’re still examining the device,” she said.
“This is preliminary.”
“What was recorded?”
“Your office.
Parts of the living room.
The dining room.”
I thought of late calls during storms.
Contract discussions after dinner.
The nights I’d put my attorney on speaker because I believed my own walls were safe.
Ortiz played a short clip.
My voice filled the room.
“If Mercer hears that number before Friday, he’ll undercut us.”
I remembered saying it.
We had lost that contract by less than one percent.
I leaned back.
Ortiz stopped the recording.
“There are transfer records associated with several files.
One recipient appears linked to Mercer’s operation.”
“Emily?”
“We’re establishing who controlled which accounts.”
I appreciated the precision.
I hated needing it.
She slid another page toward me.
An extracted message from the same collection.
“Caroline copied too much.
Find the girl before Daniel does.”
The account beside it belonged to Emily.
My wife’s words looked smaller on paper than they sounded inside my head.
“Where’s Caroline?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“What about Lucy?”
“She’s with a child advocate.
We located her aunt, Ruth Webb.
She’s coming in.”
I rubbed my face.
“Was Caroline missing for three years?”
“Missing from your life.
She appears to have left the area and stayed with family under a different address.
What happened recently is what concerns us.”
The distinction landed hard.
For three years, Caroline had been somewhere else, raising a daughter while I called her a thief in my head.
I had never tried to find her.
Ortiz let the silence sit.
Then she asked, “Did your wife have access to your business accounts?”
“Household accounts.
Some personal accounts.”
“Any large unexplained transfers?”
“I let our accountant handle those.”
The sentence sounded worse once it was spoken.
My phone vibrated.
Emily.
I let it ring.
Then a message appeared.
You need to come home.
We should talk before you do something you can’t undo.
I turned the screen toward Ortiz.
Another message arrived.
Ask Caroline why she waited three years.
For the first time that morning, something cut through the shame.
“She knows more,” I said.
Ortiz read the message twice.
May you like
Then my phone rang again.
This time, the number was blocked.
