Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN WATCHING SAMANTHA TOO
Police took Samantha’s statement that afternoon.
So did the financial-crimes investigators already working the Briar Capital case.
The flash drive was copied.
Hope’s hospital floor gained two security officers.
Claire hated every second of it.
“This was your life,” she whispered when Samantha was gone.
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Secrets. Hotels. Money moving around. People I’ve never heard of suddenly knowing our names.”
“I didn’t know about the money.”
“No.”
Claire folded her arms.
“But you opened the door Samantha walked through.”
“Yes.”
The answer came immediately.
Claire looked almost frustrated that I wouldn’t fight her.
“Stop agreeing with everything.”
“I’m not agreeing to manipulate you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you tell me I helped create this situation, I’m not going to argue about percentages because it hurts my feelings.”
She looked away.
Hope remained hospitalized for three nights.
I stayed for all three.
I learned how to suction her nose.
How to hold her during a nebulizer treatment.
How to recognize the difference between her hungry cry and exhausted cry.
Things Claire had learned while I was elsewhere.
The knowledge felt both precious and humiliating.
When Hope was discharged, Claire finally gave me an address.
Not where she was living.
A small rental house Natalie owned.
My visits could happen there.
No attorneys sitting in the next room.
No conference tables.
The first Saturday I arrived with enough baby supplies to stock a pharmacy.
Claire stared at the bags.
“What is all that?”
“Diapers.”
“She needs diapers, not disaster relief.”
“I didn’t know which kind.”
“She uses the same kind she has used since birth.”
“I bought those.”
Claire looked inside.
“You bought five brands.”
“Preparedness.”
“That’s panic shopping.”
“Probably.”
She smiled.
Actually smiled.
Then immediately seemed guilty for it.
I pretended not to notice.
Progress was too fragile to stare at.
The flash drive Samantha provided changed the investigation.
Briar Capital had been moving stolen money through several legitimate businesses.
Mine was one of them.
Ryan and I had been careless enough to give Samantha access.
But forensic records suggested neither of us created the scheme.
Then investigators found something strange.
One of Briar Capital’s shell companies had been paying a private investigative firm.
The same private investigative firm Claire had hired.
I found out when my attorney called.
My stomach dropped.
“Are you saying Claire’s investigator worked for Samantha’s brother?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does exactly mean?”
“The firm has several investigators. One of them appears to have received money from Briar Capital.”
“Which one?”
“Mark Ellis.”
That was the man whose name appeared on Claire’s evidence file.
I called Laura Pierce immediately.
She refused to give me Claire’s location.
“I’m not asking.”
“What are you asking?”
“Tell her Mark Ellis may be compromised.”
Silence.
“How do you know?”
“Financial investigators traced payments.”
“I’ll call Claire.”
“Now.”
She hung up.
Thirty minutes later, Claire called.
“You need to come over.”
Her voice was different.
“What happened?”
“Just come.”
At Natalie’s rental, Claire met me at the door holding a cardboard box.
Hope slept inside.
Claire had turned pale.
“Mark sent me this before I left.”
She placed the box on the dining table.
Inside were photographs.
Not of me and Samantha.
Of Claire.
Claire at the grocery store.
Claire carrying Hope out of the pediatrician’s office.
Claire meeting Natalie.
Claire sitting in her car outside a pharmacy.
My skin went cold.
“These were taken after you hired him?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he photograph you?”
“I don’t know.”
One picture had been taken through the windshield while Claire fed Hope in the parked car.
Rage moved through me.
I picked up my phone.
Claire grabbed my wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the police.”
“I already did.”
I looked at her.
Of course she had.
She had spent months learning not to wait for me to solve things.
A detective arrived fifteen minutes later.
The photographs were collected.
Then Claire pulled out one final envelope.
“This was mixed with them.”
Inside was a copy of our original prenuptial agreement.
I frowned.
“We don’t have a prenup.”
“Exactly.”
I read it.
My signature was at the bottom.
So was Claire’s.
Except Claire had never signed it.
The document stated that in a divorce, Claire waived almost all claims to marital business assets.
“This is fake.”
“Yes.”
“Why would Mark have it?”
Claire’s expression was grim.
“Because someone wanted me to believe you were preparing to use it.”
I sat.
Everything twisted again.
Had Samantha’s brother been feeding Claire evidence?
Real affair photographs mixed with fake legal documents?
Why?
To destroy the marriage?
To make Claire leave quickly?
I called our corporate attorney.
He confirmed the prenup had never existed.
Then he found something worse.
A draft of that exact document had been created on my company server eight months earlier.
Under Ryan’s administrative account.
Ryan denied creating it.
Again.
Investigators searched his office.
They found a folder containing Claire’s personal information.
Social Security number.
Old employment records.
A copy of our marriage certificate.
Even Hope’s birth certificate.
Ryan looked genuinely horrified when confronted.
“That isn’t mine.”
I wanted to believe him.
Then police found $90,000 in cash inside his office safe.
Ryan had no explanation.
By evening, he was arrested on suspicion of financial fraud.
I thought we finally had our answer.
Samantha and Ryan.
Maybe working together.
Maybe blaming each other.
Claire remained unconvinced.
“So clean,” she said.
“What?”
“The evidence against Ryan.”
“You think it’s planted?”
“I think whoever created a fake prenup knows how to make paperwork look convincing.”
She was right.
Three days later, investigators confirmed the cash had been withdrawn from a Briar Capital account.
Ryan’s fingerprints were not on the wrapping.
Someone had used his office access code at 2:11 a.m.
Security footage from that night had been deleted.
Ryan was released pending investigation.
Then Mark Ellis, Claire’s private investigator, vanished.
His abandoned car was found near the airport.
And inside the trunk police discovered something that made no sense.
The diamond bracelet I had bought Samantha.
Claire stared at the evidence photograph.
“How did he get that?”
“I don’t know.”
Samantha had taken the bracelet from me the afternoon before Claire left.
At least, I thought she had.
Police questioned Samantha again.
She claimed the bracelet had disappeared from her apartment before she went into hiding.
Then she finally admitted something she had withheld.
Mark Ellis wasn’t merely an investigator who worked for her brother.
He was her brother’s business partner.
And he had approached Samantha months earlier with one specific instruction.
Get close to me.
Not because of the company.
Not initially.
Because of Claire.
I stared at Samantha across the interview room.
“Why Claire?”
She looked terrified.
“I don’t know.”
“Then what did Mark want?”
“He wanted you distracted.”
“From my wife?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Samantha swallowed.
“Because Claire had something they needed.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“Claire was home with a newborn.”
“She used to work for Hawthorne Medical Systems.”
I froze.
Claire had worked in corporate marketing before Hope.
Hawthorne Medical was one of the largest medical-device manufacturers in the Southeast.
“What does that have to do with Briar Capital?”
Samantha looked toward the detective.
“Hawthorne was supposed to acquire a company Blake secretly controlled.”
Claire had handled part of the acquisition communications before maternity leave.
My chest tightened.
“What did Claire know?”
“Apparently enough to stop the deal.”
I thought about the months before Hope was born.
Claire had once mentioned a major transaction collapsing suddenly.
I had barely listened.
Samantha continued.
“Mark thought Claire kept copies of internal documents.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why use me?”
May you like
Her answer nearly made me sick.
“Because Mark said the easiest way to search a woman’s life is to make sure her husband stops paying attention to it.”
