Chapter 7 - THE WILL
I was discharged the next afternoon with a rigid splint, a bottle of pain medication, and instructions not to use my left arm for anything.
The Army placed me in temporary quarters on post rather than letting me return to my father's house.
I had not planned to stay there anyway.
Aunt Claire moved into the room next door.
She pretended it was because the hotel coffee was better than hers.
I let her pretend.
The first night, I slept for three hours.
At 2:17 a.m., I woke with my heart racing because I dreamed I heard a chair scrape across the floor.
At 3:04, I woke because my arm throbbed beneath the splint.
At 4:30, I gave up.
I sat by the window watching the base wake under a gray sky.
At 6:12, there was a knock.
Agent Kent stood outside with Captain Price and a woman I had never seen before.
The woman introduced herself as Elena Shaw, a forensic accountant attached to a federal financial crimes task force.
I looked at Kent.
“That escalated quickly.”
“The trust is larger than we thought.”
Claire came out of the next room wearing a robe and carrying coffee.
“How much larger?”
Shaw opened a laptop on the small dining table.
“Your mother created two vehicles.”
I sat across from her.
“One was the education and support trust your aunt described.”
“And the other?”
“A testamentary investment trust funded by proceeds from the sale of your grandparents' final commercial property.”
I looked at Claire.
She shook her head.
“I didn't know about that one.”
Shaw turned the screen toward me.
“The second trust was supposed to transfer to you at age thirty.”
I was thirty-three.
“How much?”
“At formation, approximately four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
I closed my eyes.
Together, my mother had left more than a million dollars in assets and investments.
My father had told me there was barely enough to help with community college.
Shaw continued.
“With ordinary market performance, both trusts combined could have been worth considerably more by the time you gained control.”
“Could have been.”
“Yes.”
“How much is there now?”
She looked at me directly.
“Roughly one hundred sixty-eight thousand dollars across all accounts we have located.”
Claire whispered something I could not hear.
I felt strangely calm.
Maybe there was a limit to how much betrayal could hurt at once.
After that, the body simply stopped adding numbers.
Shaw showed me withdrawals.
Tuition payments for Ethan.
A down payment on a lake house I had visited twice and had been told belonged to one of Linda's cousins.
Payments to a failed salon business.
Credit card payoffs.
A luxury SUV titled in Linda's name.
Forty-six thousand dollars transferred to Martin Voss's client trust account over six years.
I pointed to that line.
“Legal fees?”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“Mr. Voss has not provided invoices.”
Captain Price folded his arms.
“He claims attorney-client privilege.”
“Again, whose privilege?”
“That question is becoming important.”
Shaw opened a scanned document.
It was the trust extension supposedly signed by me on my twenty-fifth birthday.
I stared at the signature.
It looked like mine.
Not my current signature.
My teenage signature.
The same looping A and exaggerated final r I had stopped using before basic training.
My skin prickled.
“This is why Dad asked whether I still signed my name the same way.”
Kent nodded.
“He may have been trying to determine whether the old signature would survive scrutiny.”
Shaw enlarged the notary section.
The notary was Linda Mercer.
My stepmother.
I laughed.
I could not help it.
Claire stared at me.
“What?”
“She notarized my signature when I was in Afghanistan.”
Nobody smiled.
I looked at Shaw.
“Please tell me there is a record of where I was that day.”
“There is.”
Captain Price answered.
“You were on a forward operating base more than seven thousand miles away.”
“Then this should be easy.”
Kent's expression warned me before she spoke.
“Forgery may be easy to establish.”
“The flow of money is not.”
“Why?”
“Because your father made some transfers as trustee before you turned twenty-five that may have been authorized under broad support provisions.”
I stared at her.
“Ethan's tuition was my support?”
“No.”
“The lake house?”
“No.”
“The SUV?”
“No.”
“Then I am missing the complicated part.”
Shaw turned the laptop again.
“The complicated part is that after you turned twenty-five, someone created a limited power of attorney in your name.”
My stomach dropped.
“I never gave one.”
“We know.”
“Who was appointed?”
Shaw looked at Claire.
Then back at me.
“Your father.”
I stared at the screen.
The document was dated three weeks after Night Lantern.
Three weeks after I had been wounded.
Three weeks after I had spent days in a military hospital barely able to stand.
The signature at the bottom looked shaky.
Nothing like mine.
Shaw enlarged a witness certification.
Martin Voss had signed it.
The room went silent.
“Where did they get this?” I asked.
“From the bank.”
“Did the bank verify it?”
“At the time, apparently not beyond the notarization and witness certification.”
“Who notarized it?”
Shaw scrolled down.
Linda again.
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
Pain tore through my arm.
Claire reached for me.
“I am fine.”
I was not fine.
The document had been created while I was injured and overseas.
They had used the exact period when I was least capable of discovering it.
And the person witnessing my fake signature was the same attorney who had just called me and said my father had lost enough because of me.
Kent's phone buzzed.
She read the message.
Her face tightened.
“What?”
“Ethan finally agreed to an interview.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Did he explain the law office?”
“He said Voss asked him to retrieve family tax records.”
“At two in the morning?”
“He says he works late.”
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
Kent put the phone away.
Then Claire spoke.
“What about the will?”
Everyone turned toward her.
I frowned.
“What will?”
Claire looked at me.
“Your father's.”
“I don't care about his will.”
“I think Linda does.”
She opened the manila envelope from my mother and removed an older letter.
“Your mother and father made reciprocal wills before she became ill.”
I sat down again.
Claire handed me the photocopy.
Under the original arrangement, if my mother died first, certain property passed to my father for life but then transferred to me.
It included the house.
My father's house.
The house Linda had ruled for fifteen years.
I read the clause twice.
“So Dad does not own it outright?”
“Not the original portion purchased with your mother's separate property.”
Claire shook her head.
“At least, he was not supposed to.”
Shaw leaned forward.
“Do you have the executed will?”
“No.”
“Who prepared it?”
Claire's answer made every person in the room look at one another.
“Martin Voss's father.”
The connection tightened like a knot.
The younger Voss had inherited the law practice after his father died.
If the original files were still there, Ethan's late-night visit suddenly had a second possible purpose.
Not just the trust.
The will.
Kent stood.
“I need a warrant request drafted now.”
Captain Price was already reaching for his phone.
I looked down at the document in my hand.
For fifteen years, Linda had told me the house was hers because she married my father.
She had ordered me out of my mother's kitchen.
She had thrown away my mother's dishes.
She had turned my old bedroom into Ethan's gaming room before I finished basic training.
And if the document in front of me was valid, part of the house had never belonged to her at all.
My phone vibrated.
A text from Ethan appeared.
You want to steal Mom's home now too?
I showed it to Agent Kent.
She stared at the screen.
“We have not told him about the will.”
Claire went pale.
Neither had she.
That meant Ethan already knew what we had just discovered.
And if he knew, there was only one person who could have told him.
May you like
Martin Voss.
