Chapter 13 - FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
Nia stared at the forged statement.
“They used my name?”
Ruth nodded.
“It helped make the placement look independent.”
Nia stood up, then sat down again.
For ten years, she had wondered whether somebody should have tried harder.
Now she knew someone had made it appear that she had helped.
“I want to testify.”
“You will.”
A full emergency hearing was scheduled in forty-eight hours.
Graham would attend.
Pike had been ordered to produce the school’s records.
The original guardianship file had been preserved by the court.
Cameron spent the next day answering questions from the investigator.
His work schedule.
His home.
His support system.
His expectations.
“What happens if she doesn’t want to live with you immediately?”
“I keep showing up.”
“What if she never wants to use Lily?”
“Then I call her Eva.”
“What if she’s angry with you?”
“She gets to be.”
The investigator wrote that down.
Meanwhile, Elena found a voice message Caroline had sent Cameron the afternoon before the crash.
He remembered receiving it during a meeting.
He had listened once, exhausted, after the hospital.
The message had survived in an archived phone backup.
Caroline sounded irritated, but not afraid.
“Call me when you’re done.
Graham’s explanations don’t match the foundation accounts.
I copied everything.
Also, your daughter wants to know if Boston has a moon.”
Lily shouted from somewhere nearby.
“A different one!”
Caroline laughed.
Cameron had to stop the recording.
Then he played it for Eva.
She sat perfectly still.
“That’s her.”
“Yes.”
“Can I have it?”
“Of course.”
Eva listened again through headphones.
When she looked up, she was crying quietly.
“I thought I made up her laugh.”
Cameron put his hand on the table, palm up.
He left it there.
After a minute, Eva placed two fingers against it.
That evening, Marcus identified the storage location for Caroline’s copied foundation files.
A bank safe-deposit box.
The access record showed a visit two days after the crash.
Graham had opened it using authority he claimed Cameron had granted.
May you like
The bank still had the signed access slip.
And the employee who remembered him.
