Chapter 7 - THOMAS CHOOSES A SIDE
Maya didn’t defend Thomas.
That surprised me.
She sat at my kitchen table while Detective Ruiz showed us the surveillance photograph.
Thomas wore jeans and a baseball cap.
He was carrying two banker’s boxes toward an SUV.
The timestamp was 9:14 that morning.
Maya stared at it.
“I’m done.”
Ruiz looked at her.
“Do you know where he would take them?”
Maya shook her head.
“No.”
Then she corrected herself.
“Maybe.”
She stood.
“Thomas has a storage unit in Petaluma.”
My eyebrows rose.
“I thought it contained furniture.”
“Do you know the address?”
“Yes.”
Ruiz immediately called another detective.
Maya remained standing.
Her hands trembled.
“Could he go to prison?”
Ruiz didn’t soften the answer.
“If he knowingly destroyed or concealed evidence, yes.”
Maya closed her eyes.
I expected her to cry.
Instead, she removed her wedding ring.
She placed it on my kitchen counter.
“I warned him.”
Her voice was quiet.
“When the police arrived, I told him there would be no more lies.”
She looked at me.
“He promised me he understood.”
Twenty minutes later, Thomas called her.
Ruiz instructed Maya to put the phone on speaker.
“Maya?”
Thomas sounded breathless.
“Where are you?”
She looked toward Ruiz.
“With Claire.”
Silence.
“You need to come home.”
“No.”
“Maya.”
“No.”
His voice changed.
Not angry.
Desperate.
“You don’t understand what Dad will do.”
Maya stared at the phone.
“That sentence doesn’t work on me anymore.”
“I’m trying to protect us.”
“You moved evidence for Peter.”
Long silence.
Thomas whispered.
“Who told you?”
“You just did.”
His breathing stopped.
Maya’s eyes filled with tears.
“Where are the boxes?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then don’t come near the children.”
“Maya.”
“You heard me.”
His voice cracked.
“My father will destroy me.”
Maya pressed both hands against the table.
“Then maybe you should have stopped helping him destroy everyone else.”
She disconnected.
Ruiz’s phone rang seconds later.
The Petaluma unit had been located.
Detectives were on the way.
Thomas arrived at the sheriff’s office voluntarily forty minutes later.
He brought a lawyer.
And a flash drive.
The storage unit contained no documents.
But the flash drive did.
Hundreds of scanned records.
Emails.
Draft agreements.
Bank statements.
Audio files.
Thomas claimed he had secretly copied them over several years because he feared his father.
Ruiz didn’t immediately believe him.
Neither did I.
But one audio file changed everything.
It had been recorded three weeks before the dinner.
Charles’s voice came first.
“Claire is becoming difficult.”
Then Eleanor.
“She’ll cooperate once Adrian reminds her what marriage requires.”
A chair moved.
Adrian spoke next.
“And if she still says no?”
There was a pause.
Then Charles laughed.
“Son, everyone has a breaking point.”
May you like
Another pause.
“Your job is to find hers.”
