Chapter 7: What Ethan Was Holding
We met at a café two streets from the solicitor's office.
A corner table.
Ethan was already there when I arrived, both hands wrapped around a mug he wasn't drinking from.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
I sat down across from him.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
"Thank you for coming," he said.
"Gerald said you had something."
He nodded.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed a USB drive on the table between us.
Small.
Black.
A piece of tape on the side with a date written in marker: *March 2019.*
"Coyle gave it to me eighteen months ago," Ethan said.
"He told me it was insurance.
That if you ever tried to contest anything, I should give it to him immediately and he would handle the rest."
"You didn't give it to him."
"I didn't know what was on it.
And then after everything that happened yesterday —" He stopped.
Pressed his lips together.
"I plugged it in last night.
I read what's on it."
"What is it?"
"Financial records.
From 1988.
Transactions between your father and a property company that went bankrupt.
Coyle's name is on some of them." He looked at me.
"But so is your father's.
Coyle has been framing it to look like your father was the one who defrauded the company.
But if you read the full sequence — the dates, the amounts — it's the other way around.
Coyle was siphoning funds.
Your father caught it and reported it.
That's why Coyle was disbarred."
I looked at the drive.
"Your father didn't make a mistake in 1988," Ethan said quietly.
"He stopped someone else's crjme.
And Coyle has spent thirty-five years making sure no one could prove it."
I picked up the drive.
"Why are you giving me this?" I said.
Not accusatory.
I genuinely needed to understand.
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
"Because when I read it last night, I understood something.
My mother told me your father had done something wrong.
That the property transfer was correcting an old injustice.
That we were owed it." He looked down at the mug.
"I wanted to believe her.
I needed something to make it feel acceptable.
And she gave me a story that did that."
"She lied to you."
"She shaped the truth until it looked like something I could live with." He looked up.
"I should have asked more questions.
I should have asked you.
I didn't.
And I'm sorry.
I know that's not enough."
I turned the drive over in my hand.
"It's enough to be useful," I said.
"Whether it's enough for anything else — I don't know yet."
He nodded.
He wasn't asking for more than that.
I called Patricia from outside the café.
She told me to bring it directly to her office.
I was halfway down the street when my phone rang again.
It was a number I recognized this time.
Barbara.
I stopped walking.
I answered.
"I need to speak with you," she said.
Her voice was different.
The hardness was still there, but underneath it something else had cracked open.
"You can speak to my solicitor," I said.
"Not about the legal matter.
About Raymond." A pause.
"He called me this morning.
He told me if I didn't provide a statement supporting his version of the 1988 records, he would make sure Ethan was charged as a co-conspirator."
I stood on the pavement.
A bus went past.
The sound of it filled the silence.
"He's threatening your son," I said.
"Yes."
"To keep you in line."
"Yes." Another pause, longer.
"I didn't know he would do this.
I thought he was a businessman.
I thought this was a clean arrangement."
"He was disbarred for fraud, Barbara.
How clean did you think it was?"
She didn't answer that.
"What do you want from me?" I said.
"I want to give a statement," she said.
"A real one.
About how Coyle approached us.
What he told us.
What he asked Ethan to sign and what he told us it meant." Her voice tightened.
"He used my family.
And I am not going to let him use Ethan as a shield."
I thought about the drive in my hand.
About Patricia.
About the hearing in three days.
"Call Patricia Hale," I said.
"Tell her I said to take your statement."
A long silence.
"Thank you," Barbara said.
It came out small.
Like it cost her something.
I hung up and kept walking.
Coyle had threatened a judge's patience, attempted extortion, and now turned on his own allies.
He was running out of room.
May you like
But a man with nothing left to lose was still a man who could do damage.
And he still had one day before I could prove everything.
