Chapter 2 - THE FOLDER WITH MY NAMEI stared at the photograph until the image blurred.
“That bank…”
Detective Alvarez nodded.
“You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
I had seen it before.
It was the branch where Daniel managed our family accounts.
Our mortgage.
Our savings.
The emergency fund.
The account my mother had left me before she died.
I suddenly felt dizzy.
“What was he doing there?”
“We're still investigating.”
She turned the photograph around.
There were three more.
Daniel entering the bank.
Daniel leaving the bank.
And Daniel standing beside Vanessa.
In every picture, Vanessa looked nervous.
Daniel looked confident.
“Why would Vanessa give you these?”
“That,” Detective Alvarez said, “is the question.”
The baby kicked hard beneath my ribs.
I placed my hand over my stomach.
I had spent months preparing for this child.
Meanwhile, Daniel had apparently spent months preparing for something else.
“Is my car involved?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The detective hesitated.
Then she said, “Your husband appears to have been trying to transfer ownership.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was screaming.
“He can't.”
“Why not?”
“Because the vehicle is mine.”
“Legally?”
“Yes.”
“Whose name is on the title?”
“Mine.”
Detective Alvarez nodded.
“That complicates what we're seeing.”
She opened the tablet.
My name appeared on several documents.
Loan papers.
Insurance records.
Registration.
Then she showed me something else.
A digital application.
For a vehicle refinance.
With my signature.
I stared.
“That isn't my signature.”
“We know.”
My heart started racing.
“Then who signed it?”
“We don't know yet.”
The detective lowered her voice.
“But your husband tried to submit that document yesterday.”
Yesterday.
The day before he dragged me from the ambulance.
The day before my labor.
The day before he stole the car.
Everything suddenly connected.
He hadn't made a spontaneous decision.
He had planned it.
He had planned it before our daughter was even born.
“Why?”
Detective Alvarez leaned back.
“We believe your husband intended to use the vehicle as collateral.”
“For what?”
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she showed me a series of transactions.
Large deposits.
Large withdrawals.
Money moving between accounts.
And one name repeated again and again.
Vanessa Shaw.
I stared at it.
My husband's mistress wasn't just sleeping with him.
She was receiving money from him.
“How much?”
Detective Alvarez named the amount.
My throat closed.
It was almost the exact amount of our mortgage balance.
“No.”
She nodded grimly.
“Your husband appears to have been moving money out of your joint accounts.”
“Why?”
“We don't know.”
I thought about Daniel's strange behavior during the past year.
The sudden business trips.
The passwords he changed.
The nights he slept with his phone beneath his pillow.
The insistence that I was imagining things.
Then I remembered something.
Three weeks earlier, I had asked him why he needed my car.
He said he was taking it for service.
When he returned, he had been unusually quiet.
I thought nothing of it.
Now I wondered what had been inside that vehicle.
“What was in my SUV?” I asked.
Detective Alvarez looked at me.
“We're hoping you can tell us.”
“I can't.”
“Think carefully.”
I closed my eyes.
The glove compartment.
The trunk.
The center console.
Nothing unusual.
Then I remembered the spare tire compartment.
Daniel had forbidden me from touching it.
He claimed the mechanism was damaged.
My pulse jumped.
“The trunk.”
“What about it?”
“He never lets me open the spare tire compartment.”
The detective immediately stood.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
Her partner stepped outside the room and made a call.
A few minutes later, he returned.
“Mrs. Carter?”
“Yes?”
“Your husband was arrested in the hospital parking garage.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“He came back.”
A strange chill ran over me.
“Why would he come back?”
The detective's expression hardened.
“He wasn't looking for you.”
She placed another photograph on my bed.
It showed Daniel standing beside my SUV.
The trunk was open.
And beside him stood Vanessa.
Holding a black suitcase.
I whispered, “What's in the suitcase?”
May you like
Detective Alvarez looked at me.
“We're about to find out.”
