“You faked your sister’s death?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
I stared at her.
“How is there a version where that sentence makes sense?”
Claire sank into a chair near the cage.
“Melissa owed money.”
“To who?”
“People.”
“What people?”
“Before you and I got married, she got involved with a man who used her to move prescription pills.
She testified against him.
He had people looking for her.”
My heartbeat slowed.
That old sensation returned.
Information arranging itself into patterns.
“Witness protection?”
“No.
She refused it.”
“Then what?”
“My father helped her disappear.”
The funeral.
Closed casket.
Quick burial.
Claire’s parents refusing an autopsy because the “injuries were too severe.”
I had believed them.
Because normal people believe grieving families.
“Why did you use her identity for the company?”
Claire wiped her face.
“Because she was the only person I trusted.”
“Trusted with what?”
Silence.
Then Rebecca answered.
“With almost two hundred thousand dollars.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“We kept tracing.”
She handed me another sheet.
“The seventy-two thousand from your savings, the sixty-five thousand from the fraudulent commercial loan, and another fifty-eight thousand Claire transferred from a brokerage account eighteen months ago.”
I had forgotten the brokerage account.
My uncle had helped me open it after my last deployment.
I rarely touched it.
“Where is the money?”
“Northstar Wellness Consulting.”
“And then?”
Rebecca looked toward Claire.
“Most of it moved offshore.”
Claire stood abruptly.
“That isn’t what happened.”
Rebecca’s eyebrows lifted.
“Then this would be a wonderful time to explain.”
Claire looked at me.
For the first time all evening, she seemed truly afraid.
Not afraid of losing Derek.
Not afraid of the house.
Afraid of me knowing.
“I was going to leave,” she whispered.
“You already told me that.”
“No.
Before Derek.”
Derek turned.
“What?”
Claire ignored him.
“Two years ago, after I found the trust documents, I realized something.”
“What?”
“You were going to leave me first.”
I almost laughed.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“You had a storage unit.”
My chest tightened.
“I found the key.”
Oh.
That.
“You followed me,” I said.
“Yes.”
The storage unit contained old military equipment.
Photographs.
Letters.
A folded American flag that belonged to my teammate Danny Ruiz.
And one locked case.
Claire’s voice trembled.
“I saw the passports.”
Derek stared at me.
“Passports?”
“Old government travel documents.”
“There were four names.”
