Chapter 10 - The Broker
Victor Sloane chose the kind of restaurant where people paid for privacy more than food.
There were no windows facing the street.
Cars entered through a covered garage.
Private dining rooms had separate doors.
If someone wanted to disappear for lunch, this was where they went.
Detective Ortiz did not storm the place.
She watched it.
Two unmarked cars parked nearby.
A plainclothes officer went inside.
Daniel and I waited half a block away in his sedan.
Jason stayed at the hotel with Nicole after Ortiz made it clear he was becoming a liability.
At two seventeen, Victor Sloane walked out alone.
He was seventy, tall, silver-haired, and perfectly dressed.
The kind of man who looked expensive without needing a visible logo.
He paused beneath the awning and checked his phone.
Then he looked directly toward our car.
My stomach dropped.
"He sees us."
Daniel did not move.
"Maybe."
Victor smiled.
Then he raised one hand in a small wave.
He knew exactly where we were.
A black sedan pulled up.
Before Victor entered it, Ortiz stepped from an unmarked vehicle.
Two officers moved with her.
They spoke for less than a minute.
Victor did not look surprised.
He handed Ortiz a business card.
Then he got into the sedan and left.
"Why didn't she stop him?"
I demanded.
"Because being suspicious is not illegal."
Daniel's voice sounded tired.
I hated how often the law moved slower than fear.
Marlene exited eleven minutes later through the garage in a different car.
Ortiz had officers follow her.
Then she came to us.
"Sloane says he is willing to cooperate through counsel."
"Of course he is."
"He also claims Marlene contacted him for help because you unlawfully forced her out of her home."
I laughed.
"I haven't even forced her out yet."
"He says she wants to challenge the trust."
Daniel frowned.
"On what basis?"
Ortiz handed him a photograph of a document Sloane had voluntarily shown her.
It was another trust amendment.
Not the rejected one from three days before my father's death.
This one was dated six months earlier.
It gave Marlene lifetime occupancy of the house.
And it carried my father's signature.
Daniel stared at it.
"I've never seen this."
"Sloane says he witnessed it."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"Because Robert was in Vancouver that day."
I looked at him.
"Are you sure?"
"I was with him."
The document had a witness signature.
Victor Sloane.
A notary signature.
Evelyn Reeves.
Again.
"Another forgery."
I said.
Ortiz nodded.
"Likely."
"Then arrest them."
"Likely is not enough."
"What is enough?"
"Evidence of intent, knowledge, and participation."
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I stared at the restaurant entrance.
"The message said Marlene offered him my house."
"We don't know who sent that message."
"Evelyn?"
Daniel asked.
"Maybe."
Ortiz's phone rang.
She listened.
Then her expression changed.
"They lost Marlene."
My jaw tightened.
"How?"
"Vehicle switch in a parking garage."
"You had officers following her."
"And someone planned for officers following her."
That sentence stayed with me.
Someone had been planning every move before we knew a game existed.
At three thirty, Daniel took me to Northstar's main office.
I had never been there.
That was the most humiliating part.
I owned sixty-one percent of a company whose lobby I had never entered.
The receptionist looked at my ID three times.
Then the chief operating officer, a woman named Rachel Kim, came downstairs almost running.
"Clara Whitmore?"
"Yes."
She stared at me.
"I've been trying to find you for two years."
I stopped.
"What?"
Rachel led us upstairs.
My father's office had remained locked since his death because company governance documents required the controlling beneficiary to authorize reassignment.
Marlene did not own enough shares to do it.
Neither did Sloane.
No one had been able to legally open the office without me.
"Why didn't anyone contact me?"
I asked.
Rachel gave Daniel a hard look.
"We did."
Daniel frowned.
"No."
"Letters were sent to the trust contact address every quarter."
"Which address?"
Rachel pulled up the record.
My house.
Marlene's house until midnight.
Every letter had gone directly to her.
I felt sick.
"She hid them."
Rachel nodded.
"Someone also called twice claiming to be your legal representative."
Daniel went still.
"Who?"
"Nathan Voss."
Grant Voss's brother.
The lawyer my father had hired for twenty-two days.
The office door required my fingerprint and a code generated by the trust portal.
At four twelve, I opened it.
Dust lay over the desk.
Books lined the shelves.
My father's coat still hung behind the door.
The sight nearly broke me.
I touched the sleeve.
For one second, I could smell his cedar soap.
Then Rachel pointed toward a framed photograph on the wall.
"He told me you would know what to do with that."
The photograph showed my father and me on a fishing trip when I was twelve.
Nothing unusual.
Except the frame was crooked.
I lifted it from the wall.
Behind it was a recessed keypad.
Daniel stared.
"Another safe?"
"Dad liked drama."
I entered my birthday.
Wrong.
I entered my mother's birthday.
Wrong.
Then I remembered something my father used to say.
When you don't know the code, think of the day everything changed.
I entered the date my mother died.
The lock clicked.
I hated that he was right.
Inside was a single envelope and a small encrypted USB drive.
The envelope read MIDPOINT.
I opened it.
Clara, if you reached this office, then the problem is bigger than Marlene.
My pulse quickened.
Do not assume she is the mastermind.
She is greedy.
She is cruel.
But she is not disciplined enough to build this system.
Victor is not the mastermind either.
He thinks he is.
That line made Daniel inhale sharply.
Below it, my father wrote one final name.
A name I recognized immediately.
May you like
Someone I had trusted since childhood.
Daniel Reeves.
