Chapter 6 - COURTNEY’S BARGAIN
The bullet struck the brick beside the front window and buried itself in the dining-room wall. Nobody inside the house was hit. Harold moved with astonishing speed. He locked Victoria and Lila in the interior laundry room, called police, and ordered Courtney to remain flat on the porch until officers cleared the street. By the time sirens arrived, the shooter was gone.
A neighbor’s camera caught a dark pickup leaving the block. The plate was stolen. Detective Chen no longer used the word “family dispute.” She called it escalation. Victoria spent the next six hours at a secure location owned by a law firm partner Samantha trusted. Lila slept through most of the chaos, occasionally waking to feed as if the adult world had not become a maze of fraud, bullets, and secrets.
Courtney sat in a separate room under police supervision. Eventually, Chen asked Victoria whether she would hear Courtney’s full statement. Victoria almost said no. Then she looked at the brass key sealed inside an evidence pouch.
“Yes.” Courtney entered pale and shaken. Without designer clothes and practiced confidence, she looked almost painfully young. Victoria did not soften. “Start with the key.” Courtney sat across from her.
“Lucas came to the lake house the night he died.” Victoria’s breathing stopped for half a beat. “What?” “He arrived around six-thirty. Charles wasn’t there. I was.” “Why?”
“I had gone ahead for the weekend. Charles said he had meetings.” Courtney twisted her hands together. “Lucas was angry. He asked what Northbridge was paying for. I told him I didn’t know. He didn’t believe me.”
“Neither do I.” “I signed papers Charles put in front of me. I knew it wasn’t clean. I didn’t know it was millions.” Victoria stared at her. “That is not innocence.”
“I’m not saying it is.” That answer surprised her. Courtney continued. “Lucas told me Charles was moving money and Peter was creating fake vendor records. He said there was someone else. Someone above Peter who could alter fleet systems and maintenance logs without leaving normal approval records.”
“Who?” “I didn’t know.” “Do you now?” Courtney hesitated. “Yes.” Detective Chen leaned forward. Courtney looked at Victoria. “Martin Shaw.” Victoria recognized the name immediately. Martin Shaw was Baldwin-Gallagher Logistics’ chief operating officer. Fifty-seven. Polished. Patient. The man who sent flowers when Lucas died and gave the eulogy at the company memorial.
“He loved Lucas,” Victoria said. Courtney’s face twisted. “No. He needed Lucas.” Samantha entered the room carrying a file and stopped when she heard the name. “Martin Shaw?” she repeated.
Courtney nodded. “Charles thought Martin was helping him push Lucas out of operational control. But Martin was using Charles too. I heard them arguing. Martin kept telling him the fraud was too obvious.”
Victoria felt sick. “What did Lucas give you?” Courtney pointed at the evidence pouch. “The key opens a storage locker at the lake house marina. He said he had copied something there because he didn’t trust digital files anymore.”
“And you waited three weeks?” “I planned to give it to you after the funeral.” “Why didn’t you?” “Charles found out Lucas visited me.” Courtney looked down. “He asked what Lucas wanted. I lied. Charles slapped me. Then Martin called and told me people who involved themselves in corporate investigations sometimes had accidents.”
Victoria’s anger faltered, not disappearing but changing. “Why did you laugh on the porch?” Courtney shut her eyes. “Because Charles was watching me.” “That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” She opened her eyes again. “When he gets violent, I laugh. I learned it when I was a kid. My mother used to throw things when she was drunk. If I cried, she got worse. If I laughed, sometimes she stopped because she thought I wasn’t afraid.”
Victoria said nothing. Courtney’s voice shook. “I know what it looked like. I know what I did. I watched him hurt you because I was afraid he would turn on me. That doesn’t excuse it.”
No, Victoria thought. It did not. But truth did not always arrive in clean categories. Chen asked, “What recordings are at the lake house?” “Charles had me use a voice memo app during private meetings. He wanted proof in case Martin betrayed him. I copied everything to an encrypted drive and hid it under a floorboard in the boat shed.”
“Why copy it?” “Because I knew one day I might need leverage to leave.” Samantha’s gaze hardened. “You were planning to blackmail him?” Courtney gave a brittle laugh. “I was planning to survive him.”
Police obtained a warrant before nightfall. Victoria remained at the secure house while officers searched the lake property. At 11:18 p.m., Detective Chen called. “We found the drive.”
Victoria sat upright. “And the storage locker?” “Opened it with Lucas’s key.” “What was inside?” “A laptop, printed maintenance logs, and a handwritten ledger.” Victoria’s heart pounded. “Anything about the crash?”
“Yes.” Silence. “Tell me.” Chen spoke carefully. “There is a copy of a message chain between Martin Shaw and Peter Lang. It appears Martin instructed Peter to generate a false service order for Lucas’s SUV.”
Victoria pressed her palm against her forehead. “Does it say what was done to the car?” “Not directly.” “What does it say?” Chen exhaled. “One message from Peter says, ‘I created the paperwork. I’m not touching the vehicle.’ Martin replies, ‘You don’t have to.’”
Victoria closed her eyes. “Who did?” “We don’t know yet.” Then Chen added, “There’s one more thing.” Victoria waited. “We found a ledger entry dated the day before Lucas died. Initials M.S. next to a payment of forty thousand dollars.”
“To who?” “Cash withdrawal. No recipient.” Samantha, seated beside Victoria, mouthed, What else? Victoria asked. Chen was quiet for several seconds. “At the bottom of the page, Charles wrote one sentence.”
“What sentence?” “Problem ends Tuesday.” Victoria felt as though the floor had dropped beneath her. Charles’s handwriting. Tuesday. The day Lucas died. She looked through the open doorway where Lila slept in a travel bassinet, tiny chest rising and falling.
“Arrest him.” “We’re working on it.” “No.” Victoria’s voice became steady. “Arrest everyone involved.” By sunrise, police had Charles in custody again on additional charges related to fraud and conspiracy.
Martin Shaw, however, was gone. His office was empty. His house had been cleared of passports. His private aircraft was still in its hangar. For twelve hours, nobody knew where he was.
May you like
Then Baldwin-Gallagher’s dispatch system received a message sent from Lucas’s old internal account. Only four words. VICTORIA SHOULD STOP DIGGING. The account had been disabled for three weeks. Someone had reactivated it from inside the company.
========================================================================
