Chapter 7 - THE DOCTORHis name was Dr. Stephen Vale.
Then she said, “Do not forward this to anyone.”
“Why?”
“Because if it’s real, we need to preserve exactly how you received it.”
Detective Martinez photographed my phone.
The bank document was sent to financial-crimes investigators.
Within hours, Hawthorne Capital confirmed the worst.
A transfer had been attempted.
Six hundred thousand dollars.
The request included my forged signature.
But the transfer had not completed.
My father had inserted one safeguard I had forgotten.
Any distribution above $250,000 required verbal confirmation from me.
Someone had tried to bypass that requirement using a letter claiming I was hospitalized and temporarily unable to communicate.
The letter was fake too.
Nathan had prepared for every obstacle.
Except the dead man who had trusted him least.
My father.
Dad had liked Nathan in the beginning.
Near the end of our marriage, he stopped.
Once, after Thanksgiving dinner, he pulled me aside.
“Your husband pays too much attention to other people’s money.”
I laughed.
I shouldn’t have.
Now, years after his death, his caution had protected Ava.
Gavin Ross was suspended by Hawthorne before sunset.
Police obtained a warrant for his records.
Nathan stopped answering his attorney’s calls.
Patricia told neighbors she had gone to visit a cousin.
She hadn’t.
Her phone was off.
Her house was empty.
And Malcolm Cole remained missing.
Three people connected to the scheme had vanished or gone silent.
That made everyone nervous.
The police arranged extra patrols outside my sister’s home.
Ava knew none of the financial details.
I told her only that her father had made some serious mistakes and adults were handling them.
“Is he going to jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will Grandma?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at her cereal.
“Can I be mad at them and still miss them?”
That nearly broke me.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Children want adults to be simple.
Good.
Bad.
Safe.
Dangerous.
But love doesn’t disappear the instant someone fails you.
Sometimes that makes betrayal harder.
Ava stirred her cereal.
“I miss old Daddy.”
“What do you mean?”
“The one before he started asking me questions.”
I had to look away.
That afternoon, investigators found Nathan.
He walked voluntarily into a police station with his attorney.
He denied everything.
Surveillance?
Cole’s idea.
Forgery?
Gavin’s idea.
Custody manipulation?
My imagination.
The tracker?
He claimed Patricia arranged it.
Patricia, meanwhile, remained unavailable to defend herself.
Nathan was not arrested immediately.
That infuriated me.
“Why is he walking around?”
Rachel answered patiently.
“Because complicated cases take time.”
“He put something on our daughter.”
“We know.”
“He tried to steal her money.”
“We believe so.”
“Then arrest him.”
“Claire.”
I hated patience.
But patience was what finally caught him.
Two days later, police located Malcolm Cole.
He hadn’t fled the country.
He was hiding in a motel ninety miles away.
And he was terrified.
Not of police.
Of Nathan.
Cole asked for a lawyer.
Then offered cooperation.
His first interview lasted six hours.
His second changed everything.
Nathan had discovered Cole’s surveillance eight months earlier.
Instead of threatening him, Nathan hired him.
Cole admitted installing listening devices in my house.
How did he get inside?
Patricia.
She still had an old key.
I had changed the front locks but not the garage entry lock because I thought the key was different.
It wasn’t.
Patricia let Cole inside while Ava and I were visiting my sister.
The bedroom lamp had contained a microphone.
So did the clock.
Cole recorded hundreds of hours.
Nathan listened.
Then he began selecting sentences useful for court.
But the plan expanded when recordings revealed something Nathan hadn’t expected.
Me talking to Rachel about Ava’s trust.
Nathan had apparently believed the account held roughly $500,000.
When he learned it exceeded $1.8 million, the custody fight became urgent.
Cole admitted coaching Ava.
“He said it was interviews,” Martinez told me afterward.
“He terrorized her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Nathan paid him.”
I stared through the conference room window.
“Does he have children?”
Martinez looked at me.
“Two.”
I laughed once.
A bitter sound.
That night I sat in the car for almost twenty minutes before going inside.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, Ava opened the front door before I reached it.
“Mom!”
She ran toward me holding something.
A drawing.
Two stick figures stood in front of a house.
Me and Ava.
Above us she had written:
NO MORE SECRETS HOUSE.
I hugged her so hard she complained.
“Mom, breathing.”
“Sorry.”
She laughed.
For the first time since the salon, she sounded like herself.
Then she said, “I remembered something.”
My arms tightened.
“What?”
“The day Mr. Cole put the thing in my hair.”
“Yes?”
“Daddy was talking to Grandma outside.”
I waited.
“What did he say?”
Ava frowned, trying to remember.
“He said, ‘After Friday, Claire won’t matter anymore.’”
Friday.
The attempted transfer was dated Friday.
“What else?”
“He said somebody was coming.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say a name?”
She shook her head.
Then stopped.
“Wait.”
My heart began racing.
“He said, ‘Once the doctor signs it, we’re done.’”
I stared at her.
Doctor?
There had been no doctor in anything we had uncovered.
I called Rachel immediately.
She went silent when I repeated Ava’s words.
Then she asked a question I hadn’t considered.
“Claire, has anyone recently tried to make you undergo a psychological evaluation?”
I thought about Nathan’s custody petition.
Buried inside it was a request.
A court-ordered mental health evaluation.
I suddenly understood.
The money transfer had been only part of the plan.
They didn’t merely want to forge my signature.
May you like
They wanted to legally declare me incapable of managing Ava’s trust.
And somewhere out there was a doctor willing to help them do it.
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