Chapter 3 - The Broken Mirror
My breath caught. "A struggle? What do you mean?"
Detective Miller motioned for me to step out into the hallway. I told Ethan to stay by his sister's side and stepped outside, the heavy wooden door clicking shut behind me.
"The house was ransacked, Mr. Vance," Detective Miller said, pulling out a notepad. "But it didn't look like a typical burglary. It looked like someone was searching for something specific. Files were dumped out, drawers overturned. And we found blood on the kitchen counter. Not a fatal amount, but someone was hurt."
"Sarah," I breathed.
"We ran the plates on her car. It hasn't passed any traffic cameras in the tri-state area since Friday morning," Miller continued. "But we found something else. In the master bedroom, hidden behind a loose baseboard, we found a safe. It was left open. Empty. Except for this."
He handed me a photocopy of a document. It was a bank ledger, showing massive, weekly withdrawals from an account I didn't recognize. The total amount withdrawn over the past six months was nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
"Did your ex-wife have access to this kind of money?" Miller asked.
"No," I replied, shaking my head. "The alimony and child support I paid went into a standard checking account. This... this is a corporate account. Look at the routing number." I stared at the numbers. A cold dread settled in my stomach. "That’s my company’s routing number. The secondary investment branch."
"Are you saying she was stealing from you?"
"No, she didn't have access to those accounts. Nobody did except me and..." I stopped. My heart hammered against my ribs. "And my CFO. Arthur Pendelton."
Arthur had been my right-hand man for a decade. He was the one who comforted me when Sarah hid the kids. He was the one who told me to focus on the company while the private investigators did their work.
"Are you suggesting a connection between your ex-wife and your CFO?" Miller asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I don't know," I stammered, my mind spinning out of control. "But Arthur was the one handling the funds for the private investigators I hired to find Sarah. If he was embezzling from the company, and she was receiving the money..."
"It means they were in it together," Miller finished. "Or she was blackmailing him. Or he was paying her to stay hidden."
Suddenly, the pieces began to blur into a terrifying picture. Sarah hadn't run away because she hated me. She had been running because she was entangled in something dangerous. And my children had been the collateral damage.
May you like
"I need to go to the office," I said, my voice hardening. The fear was quickly being replaced by a cold, burning rage.
"Not alone, you don't," Miller said. "We're coming with you."
