Chapter 6 - The Payment
Daniel’s father had died three years earlier on a rain-soaked highway.
Single-car crash.
No witnesses.
Police said he likely fell asleep.
Victoria had called it the cruelest night of her life.
Now Isabel sat across from Daniel in a locked psychiatric facility and told him there had been a suspicious payment forty-eight hours before the crash.
“To who?” he asked.
“I don’t know the real name. The company was called North Line Recovery.”
“What did they do?”
“On paper? Vehicle repossession and transport.”
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“Eighty-five thousand.”
“For what?”
“No invoice.”
He stared at her.
Isabel continued. “Your father had started asking questions about the foundation. I found emails between him and an outside auditor. He knew money was missing.”
Daniel remembered his father’s last month. Tense dinners. Closed-door arguments with Victoria. A canceled fishing trip.
He had assumed it was marriage trouble.
Maybe it was.
Just not the kind he imagined.
“Did my mother know you found this payment?”
“She walked into your office while I was printing it.”
“And then?”
“She asked if I was sleeping.”
Daniel frowned.
“She said I looked exhausted. Then she started telling you I was anxious, didn’t she?”
He hated the answer. “Yes.”
“She built the story before she used it.”
A nurse appeared at the door. “Time.”
Daniel stood.
Isabel did not.
“Nora is filing for emergency review,” he said. “We’re getting you out.”
Isabel looked toward the hallway camera.
“You think Victoria will just let that happen?”
“She’s in police custody.”
“She won’t stay there forever.”
Daniel wanted to promise.
He didn’t.
That was one of the first lessons of the night: promises without proof were just softer lies.
Isabel reached into her sleeve and placed a folded scrap of paper on the table.
“I wrote this from memory.”
Daniel opened it.
A list of six company names.
One was North Line Recovery.
Another made his breath stop.
Briar Ridge Security.
Daniel knew that name.
They serviced the cameras at his house.
“When did you remember this?”
“After I heard Kessler talking to someone outside my room last week.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘The home system is still the problem.’”
Daniel looked at the ceiling camera.
Isabel whispered, “Victoria didn’t take your recorder because it caught Clara.”
“She took it before Clara fell.”
“Exactly.”
Daniel’s phone vibrated.
A text from Detective Park.
WE RECOVERED PART OF THE FOOTAGE.
May you like
Then a second message arrived.
YOU NEED TO SEE WHO ENTERED YOUR HOUSE THE NIGHT BEFORE ISABEL WAS COMMITTED.
