Daniel smiled faintly. "I imagine they don't usually find it on their front porch, either."
"Fair point. We'll document it properly."
Daniel returned home in the fading light with the uncomfortable sensation that someone had been looking at him from a place he could not see. He had noticed an unfamiliar car near the corner, though he had no evidence that its driver had anything to do with the envelope. He checked the workshop locks, put the police receipt in a drawer, and called Alice to ask whether she had seen anyone near his porch. She had been at the grocery store and knew nothing about it.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Something odd. Probably someone else's mistake. I handled it."
Alice was silent for a moment. "Daniel, you're allowed to tell people when something worries you."
"I know."
"Knowing and doing aren't the same."
He promised to tell her more if the matter became serious. After hanging up, he sat alone at the workshop table and stared at the receipt. He was not frightened of losing money he never wanted, but he disliked the idea that someone might be testing him without consent. It reminded him of clients who assumed a quiet tradesman could be manipulated simply because he didn't argue about every slight.
Linda learned about the police report through Bobby's message and immediately understood that the money had moved beyond her control. She demanded that Bobby explain precisely what Daniel had done. When he repeated that Daniel had walked into the station with the envelope, she called him careless and told him he had failed to follow instructions. Bobby answered that he had performed the delivery and that any further issue belonged to the person who had arranged it.
"You don't understand the people involved," Linda said.
"I understand you wanted someone watched," Bobby replied. "And I understand the man went to the police. I don't want any more part of it."
He asked for the remainder of his agreed payment. Linda refused. For the first time since accepting the assignment, Bobby considered whether he might need to tell someone what had actually happened, not merely to protect himself but because the person whose porch he had approached deserved to know why a hundred thousand dollars had appeared there.
Meanwhile, Ethan noticed an unusual delivery-service reimbursement request forwarded to his office by mistake. It referenced a private courier and an address he recognized from the restrained public records he had gathered weeks earlier. He did not open unrelated employee files or seek access to private police records. Instead he asked the accounting clerk why a personal courier invoice had been routed through Sterling Living and learned that Linda's assistant had attempted to submit it before being told that the expense was not company business.
Ethan called the assistant and asked whether the charge concerned work authorized by Victoria. The assistant sounded uncomfortable and said Linda had asked for reimbursement of a private integrity assessment. Ethan knew of no such assessment. He requested a meeting with Linda and asked her directly what she had authorized.