Chapter 2 - The First Lie Inside the Nursery
Michael looked at Claire’s note, then at me.
“If you think I’m the man she meant, say it.”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Then don’t reach for your gun.”
I hadn’t realized my hand had moved toward my jacket.
I stopped.
Michael gave a humorless smile. “That’s encouraging.”
“Take your coat off.”
“What?”
“The one in the photograph.”
Michael stared at me for a second, then removed his black wool coat and threw it onto the rocker. “Happy?”
“No.”
I picked up the photograph. The coat in the reflection looked similar, but not identical. There was a silver buckle near the collar. Michael’s had none.
He noticed it too.
“That isn’t mine.”
“Could’ve been altered.”
“So could your marriage, apparently.”
I glared at him.
“You want to choose another sentence?”
“No. You’ve spent four weeks blaming Claire for disappearing because blaming yourself hurts more.”
I moved toward him.
Michael didn’t move.
Then my eyes dropped to the listening device.
He was right about one thing.
Rage was easier.
“Who installed the nursery security system?”
“Palmer Integrated.”
“Who recommended them?”
Michael’s expression changed. “Victor.”
My uncle.
Victor Carter had been my father’s younger brother. He was sixty-one, elegant, polished, and almost impossible to surprise. After my father died, Victor helped me transform what remained of the Carter businesses from a collection of dangerous enterprises into something that could survive daylight. He had held me together after my mother died. He had stood beside me at my wedding.
Claire called him Uncle Victor.
I picked up the device. “Get Palmer’s owner.”
“At three in the morning?”
“I don’t care if he’s asleep, married, dead, or sitting beside the Pope. Wake him.”
Michael made the call.
Twenty-six minutes later, we had our first problem.
There was no Palmer Integrated anymore.
The company had dissolved eight months earlier.
Yet invoices had continued appearing in Carter Holdings accounts.
Someone had been paying a company that no longer existed.
Michael pulled financial records onto the nursery television.
“Four hundred eighty-six thousand dollars over eight months.”
“For security?”
“According to accounting.”
“Who approved it?”
He zoomed in.
A digital signature appeared.
Mine.
I stared at it.
“I never signed that.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because you don’t use Daniel R. Carter on internal authorization. You use DRC.”
That detail was known by maybe six people.
I sat on the edge of the rocker.
Michael searched payment records. The money moved from Carter Holdings to Palmer Integrated, then disappeared through three consulting firms. The last company was registered to a post office box in Evanston.
“Find the owner.”
“I’m trying.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered immediately.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
“Claire?”
“Daniel.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“Where are you?”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t come after you.”
She hesitated. “You opened the nursery.”
It wasn’t a question.
“How do you know?”
“Because I knew eventually you would.”
I looked at Michael. “Claire, there was a listening device beneath the crib.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I found one before I left.”
My stomach dropped. “One?”
“Yes.”
“There are more?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know who was listening to you.”
The answer hurt more than I expected.
“You thought I’d tell the wrong person.”
“I watched you trust people you barely questioned because they’d been standing beside you for years.”
“Michael is here.”
Silence.
Michael heard her through the speaker.
“Claire,” he said, “are you safe?”
She breathed out. “For now.”
“Are you alone?”
“That’s not your concern.”
Michael looked at me.
That was interesting.
Claire didn’t sound afraid of him. She sounded cautious.
“Claire,” I said, “your note said not to trust the person who helps me find you.”
“That’s why you need to stop looking.”
“I’m not looking.”
Another silence.
I forced myself not to demand anything.
Finally she spoke. “Good.”
“Tell me what you found.”
“You’re not ready.”
“I don’t care whether I’m ready.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because when you get angry, you become predictable.”
I wanted to argue.
Couldn’t.
“You found photographs.”
“Yes.”
“And the microphone.”
“Yes.”
“There should be a rabbit inside the crib.”
“I found the note.”
“Not the note. The rabbit.”
Michael picked it up.
I examined the stuffed animal.
“Open the seam behind its left ear.”
There was a tiny hand stitch.
Michael cut it carefully with his pocketknife.
A flash drive slid into my palm.
“Claire—”
“You need a computer that has never been connected to Carter Holdings.”
Michael nodded. “I have one.”
Her breathing changed suddenly.
“Daniel, listen carefully. There are names on that drive. Payments. Photographs. Dates. I don’t understand all of it.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“No one.”
“Then where did you get it?”
“I copied files from a computer.”
“Whose?”
She paused.
“Victor’s.”
Michael and I looked at each other.
I stood.
“You broke into my uncle’s computer?”
“I didn’t have to. He left it open during your father’s memorial dinner.”
“That was three months ago.”
“Yes.”
The same month she said she stopped being angry. The same month my affair had started.
Maybe while I had been disappearing into hotels, Claire had been discovering something much darker inside my family.
“What made you look?” I asked.
“An invoice.”
“Palmer Integrated?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know something was wrong?”
“Because I designed the nursery. There was no security upgrade on my plans.”
I closed my eyes.
Claire had caught what an army of accountants hadn’t.
“I asked Victor,” she continued. “He told me Michael added equipment because of threats against you.”
Michael shook his head. “I never told him that.”
“I know now.”
“Claire,” I said, “what was on Victor’s computer?”
“The Palmer payments. Surveillance photographs. Your schedule. My schedule.”
Then she said something that stopped me cold.
“And our daughter’s medical records.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What records?”
“Ultrasound reports. Bloodwork. Appointment notes.”
“How did Victor get them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he want them?”
“That’s the question that made me leave.”
I began pacing.
“Tell me where you are.”
“No.”
“I can protect you.”
“That sentence used to comfort me.”
Her voice softened.
“Now it scares me.”
That silenced me.
Michael turned away, giving me privacy I hadn’t earned.
“Claire,” I said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer.
“I know that doesn’t fix anything.”
“No.”
“I know.”
That seemed to surprise her.
Another pause.
Then she said, “There’s a folder on the drive called April Nine.”
“What is April ninth?”
“The date of my twenty-week scan.”
I remembered missing it.
I had promised to attend.
Then Victor scheduled an emergency meeting involving one of our construction bids. Afterward, I went to meet Evelyn.
I felt sick.
“Open that folder,” Claire said. “Then ask yourself why someone photographed me from across the street before and after every appointment.”
The line went quiet.
“Claire?”
“Daniel, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“I think someone followed Rebecca yesterday.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Where are you?”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“If you send men, they may follow your men.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“For once?”
Her voice cracked.
“Trust me.”
The call ended.
I stood motionless.
Michael opened an old laptop never connected to our company network. He inserted the flash drive.
Hundreds of files appeared.
Financial records. Photographs. Security maps.
Then the folder.
APRIL 9.
Inside was a photograph of Claire leaving her obstetrician’s office.
Another showed her getting into a cab.
The third showed the entrance to our building.
The fourth made Michael swear under his breath.
It was a scanned medical report.
Claire Carter. Twenty weeks pregnant. Female fetus. Healthy growth.
At the bottom, someone had typed a note that was not part of the original report.
IF D.C. HAS A DAUGHTER, SUCCESSION CHANGES.
I read it again.
“What succession?”
Michael’s face went pale. “I think I know.”
“What?”
“Your father’s trust.”
My father had died eleven years earlier.
I hadn’t thought about his private trust in years.
Then I remembered a sentence from the reading of his estate.
A clause so strange I had laughed at it.
Control of several Carter family properties would permanently shift when the first direct grandchild of Daniel Carter was born.
I had assumed it meant the assets came to me.
Michael was already searching.
Then his phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
“What?”
He turned it toward me.
An alert from the penthouse garage.
My Lamborghini’s security camera had detected movement.
The image showed a man in a baseball cap beside my car.
He was holding something beneath the chassis.
Michael enlarged the frame.
Not a bomb.
A tracker.
He looked at me.
“Someone wants to know where you go.”
I stared toward the nursery.
They had watched Claire.
Now they were watching me.
May you like
And whoever had built this trap knew one thing we didn’t.
Why the birth of my daughter was worth nearly half a million dollars in surveillance.
