“You need a lawyer before you touch the money.”
I laughed under my breath. “That sounds suspiciously sensible for a stranger who just admitted to watching my house.”
“I know how this sounds.”
“No, I’m not sure you do.”
“I’m trying to help my sister,” she said. “And maybe you, too.”
“Why?”
“Because Lucas told Melanie you were greedy. Cold. Difficult. He said you would destroy him financially just to punish him.”
I closed the safe and leaned against the wall.
“And you believed him?”
“No,” Grace said quietly. “Because that was almost exactly what my ex-husband used to say about me.”
For the first time, her voice cracked.
Not dramatically. Just enough for me to hear a person behind the warning.
“I know the difference between a complicated marriage and a story designed to make one person look unreasonable,” she said. “Lucas’s story was too clean.”
I stayed there on the floor for a long moment, my knees tucked beneath me, the phone warm against my ear.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I want you to meet me.”
“No.”
“Anne—”
“No. You’ve been watching my house, tracking my husband, texting me cryptic warnings. I’m not meeting you anywhere.”
“Fair.”
That took some of the force out of me.
“Fair?”
“Yes. That’s fair.”
I heard papers rustle on her end.
“I’ll email you what I have. Flight details. Lease records. Screenshots. Messages Melanie showed me before she cut me off. Some financial information, though not enough.”
“How did you get my email?”
“Lucas gave it to Melanie.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course he had.
Not because he wanted us to speak. Because he had probably shown Melanie carefully selected messages from me, curated proof of the wife he had invented.
“Send it,” I said.
“And Anne?”
“What?”
“Check your joint account again.”
My eyes opened.
“Why?”
“Because the wire request Lucas scheduled might already be pending.”
I ended the call without saying goodbye and ran back to the study.
The banking site asked me to log in again.
My fingers were less steady now.
Password.
Security code.
Account summary.
For one merciful second, the balance still read $720,000.00.
Then I clicked into activity.
There it was.
Pending transfer: $350,000.00
Scheduled for processing at 5:00 p.m.
Recipient: Desert Horizon Property Holdings.
My ears began to ring.
Not the full amount.
Not yet.
Just enough for a down payment, perhaps. Or furniture. Or a business account. Or whatever story he had told himself made it acceptable.
I looked at the time.
3:42 p.m.
I called the bank.
The hold music felt endless. Cheerful piano notes played while my marriage collapsed in scheduled transactions.
When a representative finally answered, I explained as calmly as I could that I needed to stop a pending transfer from a joint account.
“I can certainly look into that for you,” the woman said in a polished voice. “May I verify your identity?”
