Chapter 2 - THE LAST SAFE PERSONI stood beneath that streetlight for almost a full minute, staring at the messages while rain struck my phone screen hard enough to blur the words.
Not our house.
His house.
That was the first thing Evelyn Vance made clear as the freezing November rain soaked through my blue funeral dress.
“You have ten minutes to leave the property,” she said.
She stood beneath the limestone entrance of the Vance estate outside Seattle, perfectly dry beneath the covered portico. Her navy dress was still the same one she had worn to the private memorial that afternoon. A diamond brooch glittered over her heart.
Behind her, the chandeliers were glowing.
Marcus’s family was drinking his whiskey.
I could see them through the open doors.
His younger brother, Derek, was holding a bottle of thirty-year-old scotch Marcus had saved for our tenth anniversary.
Derek’s wife, Bianca, was already wearing one of Marcus’s mother’s antique bracelets as though the inheritance had been divided before the funeral flowers wilted.
And beside the staircase, two attorneys were speaking quietly to Marcus’s uncle Leonard.
My husband had not even been buried.
Yet everyone inside looked surprisingly busy.
I hugged the wooden picture frame against my chest.
Marcus was smiling in the photograph.
It had been taken on our second anniversary, before the sleepless nights, before the anonymous phone calls, before he started locking his study door.
Before he began looking over his shoulder.
“Evelyn,” I whispered, “I only asked for his personal things.”
Her mouth tightened.
“You asked for property belonging to the Vance family.”
“His watch isn’t family property.”
“It was purchased with family money.”
“The novel beside our bed?”
“Everything in this house belongs to the estate.”
“The wooden box Marcus kept in our closet?”
Something changed in her face.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
Fear.
Derek stepped outside.
“Mom, don’t waste your time arguing.”
He tossed two black garbage bags onto the wet stone.
They landed at my feet.
One split open.
My sweaters spilled into a puddle.
Derek smiled.
“There. Your things.”
I stared at him.
“You packed my life into garbage bags?”
“No,” Bianca called from inside. “The staff did.”
Several relatives laughed.
I looked at Evelyn.
Three years ago, this woman had stood beside me at my wedding and told me I was the daughter she had always wanted.
Tonight she looked at me like something scraped from the bottom of her shoe.
“Marcus loved me,” I said.
Evelyn stepped closer.
“My son made mistakes.”
My heart clenched.
“Was marrying me one of them?”
Her eyes did not move.
“Yes.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Maybe because part of me had been waiting for her to say it for years.
I bent down and pushed my soaked clothes back into the torn bag.
My fingers were shaking badly.
Not because of the cold.
Because hidden underneath my cardigan, pressed against my ribs inside the inner pocket Marcus had sewn into the lining himself, was a black encrypted drive no larger than my thumb.
I had found it six hours earlier.
Inside Marcus’s watch.
The watch Evelyn had refused to give me.
Except she did not know I already had it.
Marcus had placed it in my purse the night before he died.
I remembered his strange expression.
“If anything ever happens to me,” he had said, “don’t trust grief.”
I had laughed nervously.
“What does that mean?”
“Grief makes people show you who they really are.”
Then he kissed my forehead.
“And Harper?”
“Yes?”
“Never give my family the watch.”
Twenty-three hours later, police found his car at the bottom of a ravine.
The official explanation was simple.
Wet road.
High speed.
Tragic accident.
But Marcus hated speeding.
And according to the detective who called me, his brake system had somehow failed.
I lifted the second garbage bag.
Evelyn watched.
“Where will you go?”
For one foolish moment, I thought there was concern in her voice.
Then she added, “I need an address for the attorneys.”
Of course.
“I’ll figure it out.”
Derek raised Marcus’s scotch glass.
“You always were resourceful.”
I turned toward the gates.
“Harper.”
Evelyn’s voice stopped me.
I looked back.
She was staring at the photograph in my arms.
“No matter what Marcus told you during the last few weeks, he wasn’t thinking clearly.”
My heartbeat changed.
“What did he tell me?”
Her face hardened.
“You tell me.”
The rain ran down my cheeks.
For the first time that night, I smiled.
It was small.
Barely there.
But Evelyn saw it.
And suddenly she looked less powerful.
“I thought he wasn’t thinking clearly,” I said.
I walked away before she could answer.
At the gate, I heard Derek calling inside.
“Have the locks changed tonight.”
Another voice answered.
“What about Marcus’s office?”
“Search everything.”
I kept walking.
My car was gone. Evelyn had canceled the insurance and ordered the vehicle moved because it was registered through one of Marcus’s companies.
So I walked nearly half a mile in freezing rain carrying two garbage bags and my dead husband’s photograph.
At the end of the private road, I stopped beneath a flickering streetlight.
I reached into my coat.
Pulled out the watch.
Turned the crown exactly three times, just as Marcus had once shown me while pretending to explain how it worked.
The back released.
Inside was an empty compartment.
Because the drive was already in my pocket.
I stared at the tiny object.
One thing.
That was all I had carried out of a family worth nearly two billion dollars.
One tiny black drive.
I did not know what was on it.
I did not know why Marcus had hidden it.
But Evelyn’s expression when I mentioned the wooden box told me something terrifying.
My husband’s family wasn’t simply afraid I would inherit his money.
They were afraid he had left me the truth.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I opened the message.
DO NOT CONNECT THE DRIVE TO THE INTERNET.
I froze.
Another message appeared.
MARCUS DID NOT DIE IN AN ACCIDENT.
May you like
And then a third.
IF THEY REALIZE YOU HAVE WHAT HE HID, YOU’LL BE NEXT.
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