Chapter 2 - The Man Who Signed My Death
Victor Sloane had been at my wedding.
He had toasted Nolan with a glass of champagne, called me the smartest woman in the room, and promised that Whitmore Holdings would become one of the most respected companies in the country.
He had also stood beside my husband while Nolan signed the insurance policy intended to pay for my death.
“I want to see the original application,” I said.
Voss nodded. “We'll obtain it through the proper channels.”
“No.” I looked directly at him. “I want you to find out who submitted it, who paid the premiums, and which bank account funded the policy. If Victor signed it, he knows exactly why Nolan bought it.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow.
“Tessa, you're still recovering. Let the police handle the investigation.”
“The police are already receiving statements from three people who want me declared insane. I'm not asking to interview Victor myself. I'm telling you where to look.”
Bridget studied my face for a moment before nodding.
“She has a point, Cole. The financial trail may be more valuable than the policy itself.”
Voss opened a notebook.
“Victor Sloane. Chief financial officer. Forty-nine years old. No known criminal record. Married, two children. He owns a house in Westbridge and has a condominium downtown.”
“Check his travel history,” I said. “And his relationship with Nolan outside work.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor never did anything unless there was something in it for him.”
The words came out more harshly than I intended.
I remembered Victor at company dinners, always seated near Patricia, always laughing at Nolan's jokes. He had a talent for making his greed sound like business wisdom. When Nolan wanted to acquire a competitor, Victor found a way to finance it. When Patricia demanded a lavish charity gala, Victor made the budget appear affordable. When I asked why certain invoices had no supporting contracts, he reminded me that women who understood accounting did not necessarily understand power.
For years, I had thought he was simply arrogant.
Now I wondered how many of his insults had been warnings.
Voss left the room to contact his supervisor. Bridget lowered her voice.
“You need to tell me everything about those offshore accounts.”
“I don't know everything.”
“But you know enough to make them frightened.”
“I found transfers from Whitmore Holdings to six consulting companies. Three of them were registered to addresses where no businesses operated. Another was connected to a property in the Cayman Islands. The payments were divided into amounts small enough to escape routine review.”
“How much?”
“Initially, a few hundred thousand dollars. Then the amounts grew. By last month, I estimated that more than eighteen million had disappeared.”
Bridget's expression hardened.
“Eighteen million?”
“I was still calculating the totals when Nolan discovered I'd been asking questions.”
“When did he find out?”
I closed my eyes, searching through the memories.
“Three weeks before the beating. He came into my home office while I was working. He asked why I'd requested the historical records from the accounting department.”
“What did you say?”
“That I was preparing documents for the next audit.”
“Did he believe you?”
“I think he pretended to.”
I remembered the way he had stood behind my chair, resting one hand on my shoulder while watching my computer screen.
“You've been working too hard, sweetheart,” he had said. “You should leave the business to me.”
Then he had kissed the top of my head.
The tenderness had frightened me more than anger would have.
Two days later, the security system in my office stopped working. The technician blamed a software failure. The morning after that, a folder disappeared from my desk.
I had started making backups on a small encrypted drive.
The drive Bridget had just recovered was the final archive, the one I had hidden before Nolan attacked me.
“Did you copy the security footage from the mansion?” Bridget asked.
“Only the footage I could access through the office system. The cameras in the private rooms were controlled by Nolan's account.”
“Then how did you obtain that recording of the study?”
I looked at the screen.
“I didn't.”
Bridget went quiet.
The file was part of my archive, but I had never seen it before. Its timestamp showed that it had been added two days before the attack.
Someone had placed it in the folder.
Someone with access to the mansion's security system.
“Could Victor have done it?” I asked.
“Possibly. But we can't assume that.” Bridget leaned closer to the monitor. “Someone wanted you to find this evidence. The question is whether they intended to help you or lead you somewhere.”
Voss returned carrying a printed report.
“I've got something.”
Victor Sloane had left the country the morning after I was found.
His company had booked him a one-way flight to Zurich. He had checked into a hotel under his own name, then checked out less than twenty-four hours later. His current location was unknown.
“That could be coincidence,” Bridget said.
“Of course,” Voss replied. “But his departure comes immediately after an alleged assault involving the company's owner, a suspicious insurance policy, and a recording that places him in a meeting about the victim's disappearance.”
He folded the report.
“It's enough to make him a person of interest.”
My phone, which had been recovered from the hospital's property office, suddenly vibrated.
The screen displayed a message from an unknown number.
You need to stop looking. They know what you copied.
I stared at the words.
Another message appeared.
The insurance policy is only the beginning.
Then a third.
Ask what happened to the woman before you.
I read the messages again.
“The woman before me?” I whispered.
Bridget took the phone, photographed the screen, and immediately asked Voss to preserve the messages.
“Did Nolan have another wife?” Voss asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“An ex-fiancée?”
“No.”
“Any former partner who disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances?”
I searched my memory.
Nolan had been engaged once in his early twenties, long before we met. The relationship had ended before they married, or so he had told me. I had never met the woman. He referred to her as a mistake and refused to discuss the subject.
Her name had been Rebecca.
Rebecca Lane.
I had seen her name on an old newspaper clipping in Patricia's library. It described a young woman's death in a winter highway accident. At the time, I had barely read the article.
Now I remembered the photograph.
Rebecca had possessed the same green eyes as mine.
I told Voss what I remembered.
He made a note. “I'll look into it.”
Bridget pulled the blanket over my legs, then moved to the window and checked the corridor.
“We should arrange a secure location before you leave the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because they know you're alive. They know you have evidence. And now they have reason to believe you can connect their financial crimes to something much worse.”
As if summoned by her words, the room phone rang.
Voss answered.
His face changed almost immediately.
“What do you mean, someone tried to access her records?”
He listened for several seconds.
“Who authorized it?”
Another pause.
“No. Freeze every request. Nobody releases anything without my approval.”
He hung up and turned to us.
“A lawyer representing Nolan has arrived downstairs. He brought an order requesting an immediate psychiatric assessment and temporary guardianship over Tessa's medical and financial affairs.”
Bridget's eyes narrowed.
“Temporary guardianship would give Nolan enormous control if the court accepted the claim that she was incapacitated.”
“And he would have access to her accounts,” Voss added.
Accounts containing the remaining funds I had moved out of our joint savings before Nolan could take them.
He had not merely tried to make me disappear. He had tried to make certain that I could not fight back, even if I survived.
Bridget opened her briefcase.
“Then we need to make the court understand that Tessa is competent, that she is a victim of violence, and that the application relies on testimony from people who have a financial interest in silencing her.”
She began drafting an emergency response.
I watched her fingers move across the keyboard.
For the first time since waking in the hospital, I felt something other than fear.
I felt anger.
Not the wild, helpless anger that came when Nolan struck me. This anger was colder, steadier. It had direction.
They believed my bruises made me weak.
They believed the hospital bed made me powerless.
They believed that if they repeated the word unstable often enough, people would stop asking what had happened to me.
They had forgotten that I knew their business better than anyone.
I knew which accounts were fake, which transactions were fraudulent, and which people had signed the documents that held their empire together.
I also knew that money left a trail, even when criminals thought they had erased it.
“Cole,” I said.
He turned.
“I want you to find Rebecca Lane.”
His expression grew serious.
“And if she died in an accident?”
“Find out whether it was really an accident.”
I glanced at the unknown messages on my phone.
Then I noticed something I had missed earlier.
The final message included an attachment. It was a photograph of an old newspaper clipping.
The headline read:
YOUNG WOMAN KILLED AFTER CAR LEAVES ROAD DURING WINTER STORM.
Below it was Rebecca Lane's photograph.
Someone had circled her left hand in red ink.
More specifically, the ring on her finger.
It was a diamond ring with a distinctive square setting.
The same design Nolan had given me when he proposed.
My heart began to pound.
Because the ring in Rebecca's photograph was not merely similar to mine.
It was identical.
May you like
And I had seen that ring before.
It had been locked inside Patricia Whitmore's private safe.
