Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN THEY THOUGHT WAS BROKENNaomi Price had a way of entering a room that made everyone instinctively check whether they had done something illegal.
She was fifty-three, silver beginning to appear at her temples, and she had spent nearly three decades investigating government fraud, procurement schemes, and people rich enough to believe rules were for everyone else.
When she stopped in my father’s backyard, Vivian looked as if somebody had suddenly lowered the temperature twenty degrees.
Naomi glanced at Lily.
“What happened to her?”
“My son was defending himself,” Vivian answered before I could speak.
Naomi looked at Dylan.
Then at Lily.
“From an eleven-year-old?”
Dylan’s jaw tightened.
“She came at me.”
Lily stared at him in disbelief.
I rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t.”
She looked up at me.
I didn’t want her pulled into an argument designed by adults.
Naomi understood.
She nodded toward the phone in my hand.
“Evidence?”
“Possibly.”
Dylan took one step toward me.
Naomi’s deputy moved between us.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to.
Dylan stopped.
My father looked from Naomi to me.
“Rachel, who is this?”
I had imagined that moment many times.
The moment my family discovered the truth.
In my imagination, I had expected satisfaction.
Instead, I felt exhausted.
“Someone I worked with.”
Vivian laughed too loudly.
“Worked with doing what? Security?”
Naomi looked at her.
“Mrs. Cross, Rachel Mercer served seven years in the Office of Procurement Integrity before transferring into a joint federal investigations unit.”
My father stared at me.
Dylan muttered, “Bull.”
Naomi continued.
“Before that, she spent twelve years in Army intelligence.”
My father’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Vivian recovered first.
“You expect us to believe she’s some kind of secret agent?”
“No,” I said. “Because I wasn’t.”
I looked at my father.
“I investigated fraud involving military contractors.”
His eyes narrowed.
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because every private thing I told you eventually reached Vivian.
Because the woman you married had already convinced you I was unstable.
Because after Mom died, you became terrified of conflict and called it keeping the peace.
I didn’t say any of that.
“Because my work was confidential.”
Naomi cleared her throat.
“We didn’t come here to discuss Rachel’s résumé.”
Vivian folded her arms.
“Then why are you here?”
Naomi held up the folder.
“Cross Meridian Systems.”
Dylan’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But I noticed.
Vivian did too.
“That company employs four thousand people,” Vivian said. “If you’re here about the contract, speak to our attorneys.”
“We have.”
“My company passed every audit.”
“Some audits rely on documents.”
“That’s generally how audits work.”
Naomi’s gaze sharpened.
“Unless the documents are forged.”
No one moved.
Somewhere near the patio, a glass dropped.
My father stared at Vivian.
“What is she talking about?”
Vivian didn’t look at him.
“I don’t know.”
Naomi opened the folder.
“The Department of Defense suspended final approval of Cross Meridian’s forty-million-dollar logistics contract at eleven-forty this morning.”
Vivian’s champagne glass slipped from her fingers.
It shattered.
That was the first genuinely honest reaction I had seen from her in years.
“You can’t do that.”
“We already did.”
Vivian turned toward me.
“You.”
The hatred in her face was sudden and raw.
“You did this.”
“No.”
“You’ve been spying on us.”
“I recused myself when your company entered the investigation.”
“Liar.”
Naomi stepped between us.
“Rachel had no authority over today’s suspension.”
That was true.
I had resigned from the task force five months earlier.
What Naomi didn’t say was that I had been the person who first noticed a set of inspection reports carrying serial numbers assigned to equipment that had never entered the country.
Those reports led to invoices.
Those invoices led to shell companies.
And those shell companies led frighteningly close to Cross Meridian.
My father looked sick.
“Vivian, is any of this real?”
“Of course not.”
Dylan laughed.
“Dad, don’t listen to these people.”
My father stared at him.
Dad.
Dylan had started calling my father that six months after Vivian married him.
It had never bothered me before.
Now it did.
Naomi turned back to me.
“We need the document.”
My pulse kicked.
“What document?”
“The original transfer authorization signed by Eleanor Mercer.”
My mother.
Vivian looked at me.
My father did too.
“I don’t have an original,” I said.
Naomi studied my face.
“I thought you might.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother’s name appears on six asset transfers connected to Cross Meridian.”
My father grabbed the back of a patio chair.
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes,” I said.
Mom had died nine years earlier.
The transfers began three years later.
Naomi closed the folder.
“We believe someone used Eleanor Mercer’s identity to move ownership interests from Mercer Industrial Holdings into companies later acquired by Cross Meridian.”
My father turned white.
Mercer Industrial Holdings had been my mother’s business.
Small compared with Dad’s construction company, but valuable.
She had owned patents involving structural materials and military storage systems.
After her death, most of those assets had supposedly been sold to cover medical debt.
Or so I had been told.
Naomi looked at me.
“Rachel, we need to know whether your mother left private records.”
My eyes went toward the lilacs.
Mom hid things.
Not because she was secretive.
Because she had grown up poor and never trusted banks, accountants, or filing cabinets other people controlled.
As a child, I had watched her hide Christmas presents beneath loose floorboards.
Later, she kept spare cash inside coffee tins.
After cancer, paranoia replaced humor.
One night, two months before she died, she pulled me into the greenhouse.
“If anyone ever tells you I sold the patents,” she said, “they’re lying.”
I thought morphine was talking.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“There might be something,” I said.
Vivian’s head snapped toward me.
“What?”
I ignored her.
“Mom had a greenhouse.”
My father frowned.
“It was demolished.”
“By whose order?”
He looked at Vivian.
She said nothing.
The old greenhouse had stood at the rear edge of the farm, beyond the tool sheds.
Six months after Mom died, Vivian convinced Dad it was dangerous.
The foundation was supposedly cracked.
The building came down.
But Mom once kept a lockbox beneath the center planting table.
I remembered helping her pour the concrete.
The box wasn’t in the greenhouse.
It was under it.
“Rachel?” Naomi asked.
“I need a shovel.”
Dylan laughed.
“You people have lost your minds.”
I walked toward the equipment shed.
Lily followed.
“No,” I said.
“Mom—”
“You stay with Agent Price.”
“I’m coming.”
Her throat was bruised.
Her voice rough.
But her expression was pure Mercer stubbornness.
I almost smiled.
“Fine. You stay behind me.”
We crossed the property.
Behind us, Naomi assigned two agents to remain with Vivian and Dylan.
My father came too.
So did Vivian.
She was told not to.
She came anyway.
The demolished greenhouse site had become a landscaped sitting area.
Lavender beds.
Stone fountain.
A marble bench Vivian had purchased in Italy.
I stood in the middle.
Mom’s greenhouse had been thirty feet long.
Entry on the east side.
Planting table in the center.
I closed my eyes.
Twenty-six years disappeared.
Mom laughing.
My hands covered in potting soil.
Dad carrying lumber.
A radio playing somewhere.
“Here,” I said.
Vivian stepped forward.
“You are not destroying my garden.”
I picked up the shovel.
“Move.”
She grabbed my arm.
Naomi immediately said, “Mrs. Cross.”
Vivian released me.
I drove the shovel into the soil.
Soft.
Again.
Again.
Twelve inches down, metal struck concrete.
My father inhaled sharply.
Dylan stopped smiling.
We cleared the soil.
A square section of concrete emerged.
In its center was a steel ring.
Mom had waterproofed the compartment exactly the way she said she would.
My fingers trembled as I pulled.
The concrete lid lifted.
Inside sat a black metal box.
My father whispered, “Oh my God.”
I opened it.
Documents.
A flash drive.
A handwritten notebook.
And one sealed envelope.
My name was written across it.
Rachel.
Mom’s handwriting.
Nine years dead.
Still unmistakable.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single page.
The first line made my knees weak.
Rachel,
If you are reading this, someone has finally come for what belongs to you.
I kept reading.
Then I reached the last sentence.
And looked at Vivian.
May you like
Mom had written:
Do not trust the woman Thomas thinks saved him.
Related Stories
