I set my feet down on the linoleum cold enough to register through two layers of sock. I didn't touch the light switch. The route to the kitchen was embedded in my body now. Distance calibrated hazards memorized. I could cover the whole length of it blind and reach the refrigerator without once brushing the wall.
I eased the handle and pulled the door open by degrees. The corridor ran in both directions, dark throughout, saved for a single detail, a narrow band of yellow along the floor light leaking from under the door of Declan's home office at the far end of the hall. Something snagged in my mind. Declan was religious about his sleep. Early sessions in the gym meant early nights, and he held that line.
Ingrid would give up a meal before she'd surrender an hour of rest. So, what had gotten them both up at this hour? I continued toward the kitchen, moving carefully. My fingers had just wrapped around a glass when a sound caught me and drew everything in tight. Laughter, not the kind they performed for company, expansive and warm.
This was different, close, barely voiced the sound you make when you're sharing something that cannot afford to be overheard. intimate, contained. I should have filled the glass and returned to my room. I should have let it go. But that thin strip of yellow light along the floor pulled me toward it like a line drawn through the dark.
Weeks of dread had been building toward a moment exactly like this one, and every surviving instinct I had was telling me, "Stay and listen." I crossed the marble floor without making a sound. My spine found the wall just beside the office door, never fully shut, a finger width of air where the latch should have caught. I held my breath and went still. "So, it's done then."
Ingrid's voice sharp and tightly wound, angling for certainty. "It's done," Declan said. A mouse clicked, keystrokes fast, unhesitating. The last transfer cleared 10 minutes ago. $52,000.
That cleans out the domestic portfolio completely. The Dunore Family Trust is officially empty. The floor seemed to tilt. Empty. $18 million erased.
Where is it? Ingrid asked. Safe and sound. Declan said. Sitting in the Cayman Islands account.
The shell company can't be traced back. By the time anyone works out that the money has moved, we'll be somewhere they won't think to look. My hand came up hard against my own mouth. This wasn't petty skimming from the margins the kind a man might miss. They had raised the whole thing, every dollar I'd accumulated across decades of work.
The entire structure of a lifetime brought level with the ground. What about the bank? Ingrid asked. Any chance they raise a flag? Declan's laugh had no warmth in it at all, clipped and hollow.
Flag it for whom, exactly? I hold the trustee position. Power of attorney is mine and the beneficiary is a senile old man who can't recall how to zip his fly. As far as that the bank is concerned, I'm executing a strategic reallocation into more stable long-term holdings. A beat.