Chapter 12: Both Sides of the Door

I read the folder at my kitchen table until the rain stopped.

Hallie had put it in order, with a sticky note on every tab.

Larkspur Linen & Supply had been set up by Trent two years ago, with a post office box and no employees.

It billed a hardware chain called Kirkland & Daughter for linen, every month, for amounts that never varied.

I turned the page.

The chain was her family's.

It had forty stores across Ohio and Indiana, and the name was on the first line of every invoice.

Trent managed the regional office there.

Hallie had never said that, in a week of eating at my table.

I put my finger on a line near the bottom.

The company paid every Larkspur bill, and the money went straight back to Trent.

It came in neat pieces of twenty-four hundred dollars.

Then he had spent it on a group of friends who thought he was a founder.

The trips and the ring he couldn't explain to his wife went on my cards instead.

Brynn's hands had done the work.

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling.

She had used me to get close to his circle.

She had never once lied about the evidence.

The lie was everything around it.

I was still at the table, with cold coffee and no sleep, when the buzzer went at nine.

I pressed the intercom.

"Miles?"

It was Brynn.

Her voice was so small and wet I almost didn't recognize it.

"Go home," I said.

"I don't have one. Dad won't let me in. Please, Miles, just five minutes."

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