Chapter 3 - The Lie Beneath Their Marriage
At 7:05 the next morning, Adrian was waiting outside the guest room.
He had not slept.
Zara opened the door wearing gray sweatpants, an old Northwestern sweatshirt and no makeup.
She stopped.
“What?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“That's becoming a popular sentence twenty-four hours too late.”
“This can't wait.”
Something in his expression made her sarcasm disappear.
Twenty minutes later they were in his office.
Marcus Reed stood beside the windows.
Zara had known Marcus for eight years. He was fifty, broad-shouldered, gray at the temples, and normally possessed the emotional range of a locked bank vault.
Today he looked worried.
Adrian turned the laptop toward her.
Zara read the message.
Her face changed.
“My father?”
“Zara—”
“My father died of a heart attack.”
“That is what you were told.”
She looked up.
The room became impossibly quiet.
“What does that mean?”
Adrian's silence answered first.
Zara slowly stood.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“How long?”
“Four years.”
She stared at her husband.
Four years.
They had been married for five.
“You knew before the shooting.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me?”
“I didn't have proof.”
“That's your defense?”
“No.”
She looked at Marcus.
“Tell me.”
Marcus glanced at Adrian.
“Don't look at him,” Zara snapped. “Look at me.”
Marcus did.
“Your father was investigating financial irregularities connected to several freight companies before he died.”
“My father taught accounting.”
“He also consulted privately.”
“I know that.”
“He discovered money moving through shell corporations.”
Zara swallowed.
“Whose corporations?”
Marcus hesitated.
Adrian answered.
“My father's.”
The words landed like glass.
Zara stared at him.
“Your father?”
“Victor Cross.”
She knew the name.
Everyone did.
Victor Cross had built the Cross empire and died five years earlier, three months before Zara married Adrian.
“You married me knowing your father might have been involved in my father's death?”
“I learned afterward.”
“Prove it.”
Adrian crossed to a safe and removed a thin folder.
He placed it in front of her.
Inside were bank records, handwritten notes and copies of emails.
Zara recognized the handwriting immediately.
Her father's.
She sat down.
Thomas Bennett had been gentle, absent-minded, chronically late, and incapable of throwing away grocery receipts.
He had also been brilliant with numbers.
One page contained a handwritten line:
V.C. knows. If anything happens, find the Halstead account.
Zara's hand trembled.
“Why didn't you give this to the police?”
“Because two detectives who originally investigated disappeared from the case.”
“Meaning?”
“One retired unexpectedly. The other died.”
She looked at Adrian.
“And you thought silence would protect me.”
“Yes.”
“Again.”
“Yes.”
Zara laughed bitterly.
“You really don't learn quickly.”
A phone rang.
Marcus answered.
His expression hardened.
“What happened?”
He listened.
Then looked at Adrian.
“The literacy center.”
Zara stood.
“What about it?”
“Someone broke in last night.”
They reached Pilsen twenty-eight minutes later.
The front window had been smashed.
Computers were overturned. Filing cabinets had been emptied. Children's books covered the floor.
Zara walked through the destruction with both hands over her mouth.
“This place doesn't have anything valuable.”
Adrian crouched beside a broken cabinet.
“They weren't looking for money.”
Zara turned.
Graham Vale stood in the doorway.
Adrian immediately rose.
“Why are you here?”
Graham ignored him.
“Zara?”
“I'm fine.”
Graham looked around.
“No, you're not.”
Adrian stepped between them.
“Answer the question.”
Graham's eyes hardened.
“Someone called me.”
“Who?”
“The director.”
“Why you?”
“Because unlike you, Cross, I helped finance this place.”
Zara closed her eyes.
Adrian looked at her.
“You never told me.”
She gave him an exhausted stare.
“You never asked.”
Again.
That sentence was becoming a knife.
Graham walked toward the rear office.
“They searched here hardest.”
Zara followed.
Her father's old desk stood against the wall.
She had donated it six months earlier.
One drawer had been ripped completely out.
Zara froze.
“My father used that desk.”
Adrian and Graham exchanged a glance.
“What?” Zara demanded.
Graham crouched.
“Did he ever modify it?”
“No.”
“Hidden compartment?”
“I don't know.”
Adrian examined the underside.
His fingers found a narrow groove.
A panel released.
Inside was empty space.
Almost empty.
There was a photograph.
Zara picked it up.
Her father stood outside the Halstead Grand Hotel.
Beside him were Victor Cross and another man.
Graham's father.
Zara stared.
“Your families knew each other.”
Graham nodded.
“Unfortunately.”
Adrian looked at him.
“You knew?”
“I knew our fathers did business.”
“And Thomas Bennett?”
Graham hesitated.
Zara noticed.
“What aren't you saying?”
Graham's expression changed.
“My father confessed something before he died.”
“What?”
“He said Thomas Bennett discovered a ledger.”
Adrian stepped closer.
“What ledger?”
“One containing every payoff, judge, police officer, shell corporation and laundering operation our fathers used for fifteen years.”
Zara's pulse accelerated.
“Where is it?”
“No one knows.”
Adrian looked at the empty compartment.
“They think Zara does.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Marcus appeared.
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
He held up his phone.
Security footage from across the street showed a dark SUV parked outside the center during the burglary.
Marcus enlarged the image.
A man was visible behind the windshield.
Zara's breath stopped.
She knew him.
“That's impossible.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Who?”
Zara stared at the screen.
“Evan.”
May you like
Her younger brother.
The brother she had buried seven years ago.
