Chapter 10 - WHAT HE KNEW
Janet’s voice went quiet when we showed her the tracker.
“Do not throw it away.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Photograph it where you found it. Then let police collect it.”
Rachel crossed her arms.
“So he was spying on me?”
“Potentially.”
“No. Not potentially. It was on my car.”
Janet sighed.
“I understand. I’m using careful language because careful language keeps people from making stupid mistakes in legal cases.”
I liked her more every day.
The police took the device.
By evening, Derek had sent twenty-three emails.
I read none of them until Janet told me to forward everything.
The subject lines alone told a story.
PLEASE COME HOME.
YOU ARE MAKING A MISTAKE.
MY DAUGHTER NEEDS ME.
WE CAN FIX THIS.
CALL ME NOW.
Then, after several hours:
YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME.
The word me told me everything.
Not Emily.
Not us.
Me.
At 10:14, one final email arrived.
I KNOW WHAT RACHEL HAS.
I stared at the screen.
“What does that mean?”
Rachel looked at the storage unit key on the table.
“I think he knows about the files.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
We called the storage facility.
The manager answered after a long delay.
“Unit 318?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Has anyone accessed it?”
Keyboard clicking.
“Looks like the code was used this afternoon.”
Rachel went white.
“I’m in Pennsylvania.”
More clicking.
“Then you might want to come down here. The unit door is open.”
We drove back toward Ohio the next morning with Janet’s warning ringing in our ears.
Do not go anywhere alone.
A police officer met us at the storage facility.
The lock had been cut.
Boxes were ripped open.
Clothes scattered across the concrete.
Documents missing.
My laptop was gone.
So were two flash drives.
Rachel swore.
I stood in the center of the mess, numb.
Then I noticed one plastic bin near the back.
Still sealed.
The label read CHRISTMAS.
Derek never touched Christmas decorations.
I opened it.
Beneath tangled lights and a ceramic snowman was an old blue folder.
I had hidden it months earlier and forgotten about it.
Inside were copies of three years of tax returns.
I flipped through them.
Then stopped.
One page listed an investment account.
$184,000.
I had never seen it before.
Rachel leaned over.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
My name appeared as joint owner.
The address attached to the account wasn’t our house.
It was a P.O. box.
Janet’s financial investigator later traced transfers from that account into a small company registered in Delaware.
That company had then loaned money to a real-estate LLC.
The LLC owned one property.
A condo in Cincinnati.
Purchased eight months earlier.
The same city where the hotel charges appeared.
Kelly texted me a photograph that evening.
It showed Derek standing on a balcony.
Behind him was a woman holding a champagne glass.
Kelly.
The picture was dated two weeks before my due date.
Her message said:
HE TOLD ME THIS WAS OUR FUTURE HOME.
I stared at the condo records.
Then I noticed the purchase price.
$312,000.
The down payment had come from the investment account carrying my name.
Derek hadn’t just cheated on me.
He had used my money to build a life with the woman he planned to replace me with.
And then there was a knock on Rachel’s front door.
This time, when we checked the camera, it wasn’t Derek.
It was a process server.
May you like
Derek had filed for emergency custody.
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