Chapter 4: Two Payments
Daniel's files came through in four attachments.
I opened the first one standing at the kitchen counter with Caleb three feet behind me and Mason watching from the doorway like a man calculating his options.
The first document was a scanned ID.
My name.
My date of birth.
My signature at the bottom.
I had never signed it.
The second document was a bank registration form for an account I had never opened.
The address listed was this house.
The phone number listed was a number I didn't recognize.
The third document was a wire transfer record.
The recipient was listed as R.
Crane — Private Medical Consulting.
Twelve thousand dollars.
Dated three weeks ago.
I looked at Sienna.
"R.
Crane.
Is that Royce's full name?"
She said nothing.
"Sienna."
"I want a lawyer," she said.
The words landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
Mason straightened up.
"That's enough.
Both of you need to stop—"
"You don't get to moderate this," I said.
I turned back to Sienna.
"You want a lawyer.
That tells me everything I need to know about what you think this conversation is."
"It tells you I'm being careful," she said.
"That's all."
"You were careful three weeks ago when you opened that account.
You were careful when Royce came here twice and our son watched him walk through that door.
You were careful when you started drilling Caleb on a new name for his father." I set the phone down on the counter face-up so she could see the documents.
"How careful were you?"
Her eyes went to the screen.
Then back to me.
"The second payment cleared this morning," I said.
"What was it for?"
Mason moved.
Not toward me — toward the hallway.
"Stop," I said.
He stopped.
"Sit down."
He didn't sit.
But he didn't move again either.
I opened the fourth attachment.
It was a text exchange — not from Sienna's phone.
From a number Daniel had flagged as connected to the shell account.
The messages were short.
Clinical.
The kind of language that meant something specific to the people writing it and nothing to anyone else.
Except for one line near the bottom.
*Confirm window.
Target departs 6:45.
Confirm.*
And below it, a reply.
*Confirmed.
Proceed.*
The timestamp on that reply was from this morning.
Sent at 7:12 a.m.
I had left the house at 6:47.
I looked up.
Mason was looking at the floor.
Sienna was looking at the wall behind my head.
"Target," I said quietly.
"That's the word they used."
Neither of them responded.
I picked up my phone and called Daniel back.
He answered on the first ring.
"The fourth document," I said.
"The message thread.
Do you know who sent the confirmation this morning?"
"Working on it," he said.
"The number is a burner.
But it pinged a cell tower four blocks from your house at 7:09 a.m."
Four blocks.
Three minutes before the message was sent.
I looked at Mason.
"Where were you at seven this morning?"
His chin came up.
"I don't have to answer that."
"You're right," I said.
"You don't." I looked at Sienna.
"But I think you do."
She turned her face toward me for the first time since I'd opened the files.
Her expression wasn't guilty.
It wasn't frightened.
It was something I hadn't expected.
It was tired.
"You want the truth?" she said.
"I've wanted the truth since I walked through that door."
She glanced at Caleb.
He was watching her from the chair, both hands flat on the table, perfectly still.
"Not in front of him," she said.
"Then start talking fast," I said, "because I'm not sending him out of my sight."
She looked at Mason one more time.
May you like
He looked away.
And Sienna sat down.
