Chapter 3 - The Cabinet Cameron Kept Locked
I didn't sleep.
At dawn, I sat by the Meridian window watching delivery trucks pass below. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the woman in the photograph.
My mother.
Not a memory. Not a ghost.
A person who had asked for me by name.
The hotel room phone rang a little after eight. It wasn't Dante. It was a woman named Elena Park, an attorney Isabella had contacted after I asked whether I could report what Cameron had done.
Elena spoke plainly. She didn't call me sweetheart. She didn't ask whether I was sure about leaving.
"You can make a police report," she said. "You can also ask for help collecting your belongings. You don't have to go back alone."
"Cameron's father is a senator."
"That doesn't change your right to say no. It might change how carefully we document what happened."
I liked her immediately.
Two hours later, I was sitting in her office with a cup of tea I couldn't drink. I told her about Cameron's grip on my wrist, his threats, his habit of telling strangers I was confused.
When I showed her the photograph of the mark on my arm, she asked permission to keep a copy.
She asked before every step.
I almost cried over that more than I had cried at the nightclub.
"I need my identification and my work papers," I said. "They're at the apartment."
"Then we'll arrange a supervised pickup."
"He'll act charming."
"He may. You don't need to argue with him."
That afternoon, two officers met us at the building. Elena stayed beside me. Gabriel waited outside at my request. I wanted him close enough to help if something went wrong, but I didn't want Cameron claiming I had arrived with Dante Valenti's men to threaten him.
Cameron opened the door in a blue shirt and expensive trousers.
He looked rested.
Of course he did.
"Nora," he said warmly. "Thank God. I've been worried sick."
My stomach clenched.
The officers introduced themselves. Cameron smiled at them as though they were guests arriving for brunch.
"There was a misunderstanding," he said. "She's been under tremendous stress."
Elena spoke before I could. "We're here while Ms. Bennett gathers her property."
Cameron looked at me. His smile held.
"Whatever you need, sweetheart."
I walked to the bedroom without answering.
The apartment smelled like his coffee. The bed was made. My photograph had disappeared from the bedside table. Everything looked so ordinary that, for one dizzy second, I wondered whether I had imagined the night before.
Then I saw the broken clasp on the drawer where I had once hidden the emergency cash.
He had searched for it.
I packed my documents, two changes of clothes, the photograph of my mother from my eighteenth birthday, and the paperback with the hollowed-out pages.
Cameron watched from the bedroom doorway.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
"Move back, please," an officer told him.
He obeyed. His eyes stayed on me.
In the living room, I noticed the filing cabinet.
It was the same dark metal cabinet I had seen beside Victor Sloane months earlier. The lock gleamed beneath the window.
"I want to photograph that," I told Elena quietly.
"Why?"
"A man named Victor Sloane was here. Cameron wouldn't tell me what they were doing. I think my mother's name may be inside."
Elena studied the cabinet. "You can describe what you saw. We can't open someone else's locked cabinet during a property pickup without authority."
"I'm not asking you to."
I took a photograph of the cabinet from where I stood. Cameron's smile vanished when he saw my phone.
"That contains confidential material," he said.
"Then it should remain locked," Elena replied.
He gave her a long look.
As I reached for my coat, a white envelope fell from the stack of mail that had been placed on top of my handbag. My name was written across it in Cameron's careful handwriting.
"What's this?" I asked.
He moved quickly. "Nothing important."
I picked it up before he could.
Inside was a photocopy of a document bearing my name. I recognized the signature immediately.
It wasn't mine.
The form described me as an authorized recipient of payments through the Lakeshore Civic Trust. Six years earlier, someone had supposedly signed on my behalf.
Six years ago, I had been twenty.
I had never heard of the trust.
"Why is my name on this?" I asked.
Cameron glanced at the officers. "It's just a draft. Don't make a scene."
"A draft of what?"
He didn't answer.
Elena held out her hand. "Nora, may I see it?"
I gave it to her. She placed it in a clear folder and noted where it had come from. The original remained in the apartment, but the copy had been addressed to me, lying with my mail.
"We'll discuss this outside," she said.
Cameron stepped toward me.
"Nora."
I flinched.
An officer moved between us.
"You need to let her leave."
Cameron's eyes met mine over the officer's shoulder.
For a second, the mask slipped.
Then he smiled again.
"Of course. I only want what's best for her."
I had heard that sentence so many times I knew the shape of it better than my own address.
Outside, I managed three breaths before my knees shook. Elena led me to a bench and waited until I could speak.
"That signature is false," I said.
"Then we should treat it as evidence and have it examined."
"Cameron met me two years ago. Why does he have a document from six years ago?"
"That's a question worth asking."
I looked down at the paper through the clear folder. Beside my forged signature was a second name, printed in neat capitals.
Evelyn Bennett.
My mother was listed as the person who had verified my authority.
Six years after her funeral? No.
One year after her funeral.
I corrected the thought and felt sick anyway.
Someone had made a dead woman witness a signature her daughter never wrote.
Back at Elena's office, she called an investigator who worked on financial fraud cases. I told him about the cabinet, the silver-haired man, and the security photograph from Saint. He asked whether the nightclub would preserve the original footage.
"Isabella already has," I said.
He made a note.
Before leaving, I asked Elena one more question.
"Could my mother have signed that? Could she really have been alive then?"
"The document alone can't tell us," she said. "Signatures can be forged. Dates can be false. The photograph is a separate lead. We need evidence for each."
It wasn't comforting.
It was honest.
That evening, Dante called the hotel desk and asked whether I wished to speak with him. I agreed.
"Gabriel says you got your things," he said.
"Some of them."
"Are you all right?"
I looked at the folder on my bed.
"No. But I know something you should hear."
I told him about the document. He said nothing until I mentioned the year.
"That date," he said. "Nora, it's the same year the transfer bearing your mother's authorization appeared in my company's records."
I sat down slowly.
"How much money was transferred?"
He paused.
"More than twelve million dollars."
My hand tightened around the receiver.
I had spent two years being told I couldn't remember ordinary conversations.
May you like
Now I was being told my name had been used to move a fortune I had never seen.
And Cameron Hale had kept a copy in the apartment where I slept.
