Chapter 15: Anson's Ledger

Anson's POV

Abby fell asleep with her cheek on my arm, and the phone kept buzzing with a lie about her.

I turned it face down on the floor.

I did not wake her.

I lay there for ten minutes, listening to her breathe, and then my own phone rang under the pillow.

The number was Whitcroft House.

"Mr. Rotherham," said the old butler, very quietly. "Please don't say my name. Come to the garden door in thirty minutes."

"Mr. Whitcroft is at the television studio until eight. I have something that Mrs. Whitcroft wished you to see."

I wrote Abby a note on the back of a bank statement.

Gone to get the other half of the books. Don't leave the apartment. Lock the door.

I weighed it for a moment and added: I'm not on the balance sheet. Put me there.

Then I went.

The butler was waiting in the cold behind the kitchen with a ring of keys.

He walked me through the dark house to the study without turning on a light.

Lawrence's desk was enormous, with a gold pen stand on it, empty.

The butler crossed to the portrait of the company founder and swung it out on a hinge.

Behind it was a wide steel safe.

"Mrs. Whitcroft gave me the combination eight years ago," he said. "She told me to open it only if the girl came home and he moved against her."

"He moved last night."

He spun the dial.

Inside there were two shelves.

On the top shelf sat a gray ledger, hand-lettered in Lawrence's neat, kind script.

On the bottom shelf sat a cardboard box of invoices.

I opened the ledger first.

It was a second set of books.

I turned pages and my mouth went dry.

Every loan I had made to Whitcroft Holdings in six years was written there.

Every one.

Next to each, in the same tidy hand, was a second entry: a transfer, the same day, from the Whitcroft account to a line called ABIGAIL W. RESERVE.

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