Chapter 3 - THE NAME IN THE LEDGER
Harper backed away from the laptop.
“I want to leave.”
Leo moved aside immediately.
“The elevator is through that door.”
That stopped her.
No blocking her.
No warning that the city was dangerous without him.
No demand that she prove her innocence first.
Harper hated that his willingness to let her go made her trust him slightly more.
“You really believe I can walk out?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“Then whoever put your name on that account still has your Social Security number, your address history, your signature, and apparently access to one of my financial systems.”
Harper closed her eyes.
Trent.
Little things returned to her.
Questions she had dismissed.
Mail disappearing.
Tax documents he insisted on organizing.
The afternoon he became furious because she changed the password on her email account.
“There were letters,” she whispered.
Leo waited.
“About a year ago. Government-looking envelopes. One said something about a business.”
“Bennett Logistics?”
“I don’t remember. Trent said it was junk mail.”
“What happened to them?”
“He burned them in the kitchen sink.”
Cole stopped typing.
Harper looked at him.
“He said somebody had probably stolen my information and he would handle it.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
“He handled it.”
Harper sat again.
This time, nobody told her to.
“He took pictures of my driver’s license,” she said. “My Social Security card too.”
“When?”
“He said he needed them for health insurance paperwork.”
“Did you sign anything?”
Harper gave a humorless laugh.
“Hundreds of things.”
Leo’s expression changed.
“What does that mean?”
“When Trent was in a good mood, he always had a project. New cable company. Insurance quote. Car financing. Apartment renewal. He’d put papers in front of me and say, ‘Sign here, here and here.’ If I asked too many questions…”
She stopped.
Nobody needed the rest.
Cole turned his laptop toward Leo.
“I found seventeen companies.”
Harper looked up.
“Seventeen?”
“All formed during the past three years. Different women. Same registration service.”
“Northline?” Leo asked.
Cole nodded.
Harper moved closer.
Names filled the screen.
Women she did not know.
Danielle Ortiz.
Melissa Crane.
Rebecca Young.
Tanya Brooks.
Some companies had received tens of thousands.
Others hundreds of thousands.
Harper’s had received millions.
“What are these?”
“Ghost companies,” Leo said. “Clean identities attached to dirty money.”
Harper stared at him.
“You mean money laundering.”
“Yes.”
She almost laughed again.
Twenty-four hours earlier, her greatest fear had been making Trent angry over an electric bill.
Now a mafia boss was telling her somebody had used her identity to wash millions of dollars.
Cole opened another database.
Then he froze.
“What now?” Leo asked.
“I found a common connection.”
The women were not random.
Eleven of the seventeen had addresses, emergency contacts, employment histories, or intake records linked to the same organization.
Harbor House Women’s Resource Center.
Harper’s mouth went dry.
“That’s Sarah’s shelter.”
Leo looked at her.
“The woman who gave you the number?”
“Yes.”
Cole leaned back.
“So somebody with access to Harbor House records has been feeding identities into Northline.”
Harper shook her head.
“Sarah wouldn’t do that.”
“I didn’t say Sarah.”
“She helped my sister years ago. She helps women all the time.”
Leo closed the financial page.
“Then we find out who else has access.”
Harper suddenly remembered something.
“One man.”
Leo looked at her.
“What man?”
“He came to our house.”
“When?”
“Maybe six months ago.”
“What did he look like?”
“Fifties. Gray hair. Expensive coat. Not like Trent’s friends.”
“What happened?”
“They went into the kitchen and told me to watch television.”
She rubbed her arms.
“I heard Trent say he needed more time.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did the other man say?”
Harper concentrated.
Three years of surviving Trent had trained her to remember tones better than words.
“He told Trent not to become sentimental.”
Leo’s eyes hardened.
“What else?”
“He said…”
She swallowed.
“He said, ‘Clean names are harder to replace than money.’”
Cole slowly looked at Leo.
Leo walked to the laptop.
He brought up a photograph.
A silver-haired man in a dark blue suit stood beside Leo at some expensive event.
His smile was warm.
Respectable.
The kind of face people trusted with retirement accounts.
Harper pointed immediately.
“That’s him.”
Leo said nothing.
“I’m sure.”
Cole muttered something under his breath.
“Who is he?” Harper asked.
Leo continued staring at the photograph.
“Graham Voss.”
“Northline?”
“No.”
The answer somehow sounded worse.
Leo finally looked at her.
“Graham has been my chief financial officer for eleven years.”
Harper felt cold spread through her body.
“Then he can see your accounts.”
“He built half the systems that control them.”
“Your warehouses?”
“Yes.”
“Your security companies?”
“Yes.”
“Safe houses?”
Cole closed the laptop.
Leo did not answer.
He did not need to.
Harper looked around the quiet apartment.
The locked entrance.
The underground garage.
The rooms she had believed, for less than an hour, might be safe.
“If Graham is helping Trent,” she whispered, “and Graham knows your properties…”
Leo reached for his jacket.
Cole was already packing the laptop.
Harper stood.
“What?”
Leo checked his weapon.
For the first time since entering the apartment, he looked genuinely alarmed.
“We’re leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because Graham Voss doesn’t just have access to my money.”
May you like
Leo looked toward the door.
“He has the addresses of every place I would take someone I wanted to keep alive.”
