Chapter 18 - The Victory That Wasn't
The first official victory arrived on a Wednesday.
The court set aside the disputed property document pending further proceedings, and the civil allegations against me began unraveling under scrutiny.
Northline completed its investigation and restored my position without disciplinary findings.
The company president apologized in person for the damage caused by the forged communications.
Nora said we were in a much stronger legal position.
For the first time in weeks, I slept five uninterrupted hours.
I bought groceries instead of eating dinner from a motel vending machine.
I called the physical therapist and told her the knee was improving.
Then Rachel invited me to dinner.
We talked about Aaron, his terrible singing voice, and the time he'd tried to repair a grill using an instruction manual printed in the wrong language.
For two hours I remembered him as a man, not a casualty report.
When I returned to my room, a news alert lit up my phone.
DEREK VALE? NO.
The headline was corrected moments later.
GYM OWNER DEREK HALE QUESTIONED IN FINANCIAL FRAUD INVESTIGATION.
I read the article twice.
Derek's name, it turned out, was Derek Hale.
I had barely ever cared about his surname.
But the correction wasn't what mattered.
The article reported that Price's law firm denied wrongdoing and that several records relevant to the case had been destroyed during the gym's closure.
A few minutes later, Nora called.
“We have a problem.”
Investigators had recovered a storage device, but it was not the original drive.
It contained files copied from various sources, mixed with altered documents that purported to bear my signature.
Price's attorneys claimed the device proved I'd assembled a fraudulent dossier to blackmail a contractor.
I sat down slowly.
“They're trying to make the evidence itself look fake.”
“Yes.”
Rourke joined the call.
“The drive I gave you had an identifying flaw in its casing,” he said.
“A hairline crack near the connector.”
“Did you record it?” Nora asked.
“Better,” he said.
“I kept the duplicate inventory from the day I handed it to Cole.”
The documentation contained a serial number and a description of the contents as preserved at the time.
Nora exhaled.
“That may help establish what was original and what came later.”
Before she could say more, another call came through.
Leah was missing from her apartment.
May you like
Her phone had been found on the kitchen floor.
