Chapter 3 - The Broken Ledger
I stared at the empty lockbox with a sinking feeling in my chest.
My mother's maiden name was not public knowledge in this town.
I turned around and marched back into the lobby.
I grabbed Arthur by the collar of his expensive jacket and hauled him to his feet.
“What was in that box?” I demanded.
Arthur refused to look me in the eye.
“It was just old family documents,” he stammered.
I pushed him against the wall, not caring that the local police were watching.
“People do not deploy a tactical strike team for old family documents,” I said.
Captain Landry stepped forward and told me to release my brother.
I turned my gun on Landry, holding it securely at my side.
“If you take one more step, I will arrest you for conspiracy to commit federal evidence tampering,” I warned.
Landry stopped in his tracks, his jaw clenched in quiet fury.
I dragged Arthur into a vacant interrogation room and locked the door behind us.
I slammed him into the metal table and told him his wife was going to prison.
Arthur broke down in tears, burying his face in his trembling hands.
He confessed that the baseball bat Brooke used wasn't just a random weapon.
It had a hollowed-out handle containing a digital ledger.
The ledger contained offshore bank accounts linking the Westbridge police to a massive drug cartel.
Brooke hadn't hit Mom out of anger.
She hit her to force Mom to reveal where my late father had hidden the decryption key.
I stepped back, the air suddenly knocked out of my lungs.
My father had been dead for ten years.
He died in a car crash when I was in college.
I asked Arthur why Brooke thought Mom had a key to a cartel ledger.
Arthur looked up at me with absolute terror in his eyes.
He told me the car crash was a cover story.
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Our father didn't die ten years ago.
He faked his death to run the cartel, and he was the one who sent the mercenaries tonight.
