Chapter 4 - The Woman My Husband Was Afraid Of
The Mason Street fire burned for four hours.
I watched footage from my hospital bed while local news helicopters circled above the storage facility.
Flames rolled through the eastern building.
Fire crews broke through metal doors.
Smoke covered half the block.
By midnight, reporters were already calling it an electrical accident.
Detective Brooks didn't.
She arrived at my hospital room just after one in the morning.
The moment I saw her, I almost cried from relief.
I showed her the photograph.
She examined it without visible emotion.
"That's the parking garage beneath police headquarters."
"So whoever sent this followed you."
"Apparently."
"Are you scared?"
Brooks handed the phone back.
"Being scared and stopping are different things."
She sat.
"The fire started in a corridor thirty feet from locker 417."
My mother covered her mouth.
"Was everything destroyed?"
"Fire suppression contained that section before the locker fully burned."
Hope flared.
"What survived?"
"Enough."
Brooks looked at me.
"The lock had already been drilled."
My stomach dropped.
"Someone got there first?"
"We found the door partially open."
"What was inside?"
"Old corporate records, survey maps, financial ledgers, and several encrypted hard drives."
"Missing?"
"One hard drive is missing according to the inventory sheet taped inside the box."
Grant, who had returned after helping at the scene, stood near the window.
"Any cameras?"
"Disabled twenty-three minutes before the fire."
David.
I could feel his fingerprints on everything even when he left none behind.
Brooks continued.
"But whoever entered the locker missed something."
She placed a small plastic bag on the bedside table.
Inside was a silver flash drive.
"Firefighters found it taped underneath a steel shelf."
My mother whispered, "Charles."
Brooks nodded.
"We haven't opened it yet."
"Why?"
"It's encrypted."
I stared at the tiny drive.
My father had been dead four years, yet it felt as if he'd reached through time and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"What happens now?"
"We take it to digital forensics."
Brooks hesitated.
"And there's something else."
Of course there was.
She slid a printed photograph across the blanket.
It showed David leaving Mason Street Storage three days earlier.
He wasn't alone.
Rebecca walked beside him.
My heartbeat accelerated.
"They knew about the locker before the lake."
Brooks nodded.
"What were they doing there?"
"We don't know."
I studied Rebecca's face in the photograph.
She looked tense.
David looked angry.
Something about their body language bothered me.
They didn't look like lovers.
They looked like people arguing.
Brooks noticed where I was staring.
"Rebecca Shaw contacted me tonight."
I lifted my head.
"What?"
"She says she wants an attorney before giving a formal statement. But she also says she's afraid of David."
I laughed bitterly.
"That's convenient."
"Maybe."
"She slept with my husband."
"I didn't say she was innocent."
"What did she tell you?"
Brooks paused.
"She said you're wrong about one thing."
My anger sharpened.
"Which thing?"
"She says David wasn't having an affair with her because he loved her."
That was almost insulting.
"Then what do you call it?"
"She says he was using her."
"For what?"
"Access."
Rebecca worked in compliance at Hawthorne Development.
Suddenly, I remembered David complaining months earlier that the company's internal audit department had become aggressive after a new federal reporting standard.
Rebecca didn't simply share an office with David.
She had access to financial records.
Wire transfers.
Corporate subsidiaries.
Archived acquisition files.
Maybe David hadn't pursued Rebecca only because she was young and beautiful.
Maybe he'd needed something she could reach.
"Did she give him files?" I asked.
Brooks nodded once.
"According to her preliminary statement, yes."
"What kind?"
"She wouldn't say without counsel."
I looked down at my hands.
I should have felt vindicated.
Instead, I felt exhausted.
Every answer created two new lies.
At nine the next morning, Dr. Park finally discharged me under strict instructions: bed rest, reduced stress, immediate return for bleeding, regular contractions, decreased fetal movement, dizziness, or shortness of breath.
Reduced stress.
Again, almost funny.
I did not go home.
Mom took me to my childhood house forty minutes outside the city.
Detective Brooks arranged for patrol checks.
Grant installed temporary cameras at the entrances without accepting payment.
For three days, David disappeared.
No calls.
No texts.
No sightings at work.
Hawthorne Development placed him on administrative leave after police served a search warrant on his office.
Then, Thursday afternoon, Rebecca came to my mother's house.
She looked nothing like the woman David had pulled from the lake.
No makeup.
No expensive coat.
Her eyes were swollen from lack of sleep.
Detective Brooks and Rebecca's attorney stood with her.
I almost refused to see her.
Almost.
Then Rebecca said, "I know why David needed you dead before the baby came."
I let her inside.
We sat across from each other at my mother's dining-room table.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Finally, Rebecca whispered, "I'm sorry."
I stared at her.
"Don't."
She flinched.
"Don't give me the apology that helps you sleep. Tell me the truth."
She nodded.
"David and I started sleeping together eight months ago."
My daughter kicked.
I kept my face still.
Rebecca continued.
"He told me your marriage was over. He said you were only staying together because of the pregnancy."
"Classic."
"I know how stupid it sounds now."
"It sounded good enough when you were sleeping with him."
Her eyes filled.
"I deserve that."
"You deserve worse."
Brooks watched silently.
Rebecca took a shaky breath.
"David first approached me because of my father."
"Richard Shaw."
She looked surprised.
"You know?"
"My father investigated him."
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
"My dad handled acquisitions for Hawthorne. When he died, I inherited several encrypted drives from his home office. I never knew what was on them."
"David did."
"Yes."
"How?"
"He said he'd found references to my father in old Blackwood files. He told me Richard had hidden money from Hawthorne and that if I helped recover it, we'd both be rich."
"So you gave him the drives."
"Eventually."
"And slept with him."
She looked ashamed.
"Yes."
Anger burned through me.
But I wanted the rest.
"What was on them?"
"Records of bribes. False shoreline surveys. Shell companies. Millions moved through fake consulting contracts."
"Your father stole it?"
Rebecca shook her head.
"Some. But not all."
She looked at Brooks.
"David started using the same system after Richard died."
The room went silent.
I whispered, "David was embezzling from Hawthorne."
"Over seven million dollars that I could document. Probably more."
My skin went cold.
"Why Blackwood?"
"Because he needed one huge transaction to bury everything. If Hawthorne bought your land, David planned to route development payments through the old shell companies, close them afterward, and make it look like the missing money was part of legitimate land acquisition expenses."
Brooks asked, "Why couldn't he simply pressure Simone into selling?"
"He tried."
I thought of every dinner argument.
Every accusation that I didn't support his career.
Every time he told me my father had been sentimental and foolish.
Rebecca continued.
"Then David discovered your father's hidden audit trail. He realized Charles Whitaker had documented the original scheme years ago. If anyone compared that evidence to the accounts David was using now, it would expose him immediately."
"And my daughter's birth?" I asked.
Rebecca swallowed.
"Your trust changes when she's born."
I already knew.
But hearing it from her still hurt.
"David said if you died before delivery, he'd inherit effective control. He could approve the sale to Hawthorne quickly."
"You knew this?"
"Not at first."
"When did you know?"
Her silence answered.
"Rebecca."
"Two weeks ago."
I stood so fast my chair scraped backward.
"You knew he wanted my land if I died, and you still came to the lake?"
"I didn't know he planned to hurt you."
"You heard him say I wouldn't survive."
"After the dock collapsed!"
I felt pressure building behind my eyes.
Brooks intervened.
"Simone."
I sat again.
Rebecca was crying now.
"David told me the dock was unsafe. He said he'd arranged for it to break after we left so he could pressure your insurance carrier and force repairs before Hawthorne inspectors came. I thought it was fraud. I didn't know he intended for anyone to be standing on it."
"Then why were you there?"
"Because he told me to step onto it."
My anger paused.
Rebecca looked genuinely terrified.
"He positioned both of us over the weakened section."
"What?"
"He told me to stand beside you for a picture."
Brooks leaned forward.
"Rebecca, are you saying you believe David intended both women to fall?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Rebecca's voice dropped.
"Because after I gave him my father's files, I became the only living person besides him who knew where the money went."
My entire body went cold.
David hadn't chosen his mistress because he loved her more.
He'd chosen Rebecca because she was useful alive after the dock collapsed.
Maybe he had planned for me to die.
Maybe he'd planned for Rebecca to panic so badly afterward that nobody would question her.
Or maybe he'd intended both of us to die and changed course when witnesses appeared.
Then Rebecca reached into her purse.
Her attorney immediately said, "Rebecca."
"I have to."
She pulled out an old smartphone.
"David gave me this six months ago. He thought I destroyed it."
Brooks took it.
"What is on it?"
"Recordings."
My pulse jumped.
"What recordings?"
Rebecca looked directly at me.
"David talking about Blackwood."
She hesitated.
"And talking about Simone."
Brooks powered on the phone.
The battery was low, but it worked.
Rebecca opened an audio file dated twelve days before the lake.
David's voice filled my mother's dining room.
"Once the baby is born, the trust becomes a nightmare."
A male voice I didn't recognize answered.
"Then handle it before that."
David again.
"I'm trying."
"Trying doesn't erase seven million dollars."
Then came a sentence that made my daughter seem to go still inside me.
David laughed quietly.
"Accidents happen around water every day."
The recording stopped.
I couldn't breathe.
Brooks immediately asked, "Who is the other man?"
Rebecca wiped her cheeks.
"I don't know."
"You worked at Hawthorne. Think."
"I never saw him."
"Then how was this recorded?"
Rebecca's hand trembled.
"David accidentally called me from that phone. I heard the conversation and recorded it from another device."
Brooks replayed the unknown voice.
I knew I had heard it somewhere.
Not recently.
Years ago.
At charity dinners.
Corporate events.
My wedding.
I closed my eyes.
Then recognition hit.
I opened them.
"I know him."
Everyone turned toward me.
"Who?"
Before I could answer, the front window exploded.
Glass sprayed across the dining room.
Grant threw himself over me as Brooks drew her weapon.
My mother screamed.
A second impact struck the wall.
Not a gunshot.
A rock.
Wrapped around it was a piece of paper.
Brooks picked it up.
Three words had been typed across the page.
SILENCE YOUR WIFE.
Below them was a photograph of David.
He was kneeling on the floor somewhere dark.
May you like
His hands were tied behind his back.
And someone was holding a gun against the back of his head.
