Chapter 3 - FIRE IN THE STUDY
Claire ran before anyone could stop her.
Smoke thickened inside the west hallway. A guard shouted that the electrical panel had sparked, but the flames were too clean, too focused. They climbed the curtains beside Charles Caldwell’s desk and ate through a stack of folders arranged in the center of the room.
Someone had built the fire exactly where the evidence would burn.
Claire grabbed a brass vase, threw the flowers aside, and dumped the water over the nearest folder. Maya dragged a wool rug from the hall and beat at the flames.
The guard stood in the doorway.
He did not help.
“Call the fire department,” Claire yelled.
“They’re already coming,” he replied.
His tone was flat. Almost disappointed.
Claire pulled one half-burned document from the desk. Her name appeared at the top: CLAIRE BENNETT CALDWELL.
Below it was a signature that looked enough like hers to fool a stranger.
It authorized the transfer of her Mission Bay condominium into a Caldwell family holding company.
The effective date was the following Monday.
Maya found a metal flash drive beneath the desk, hot but undamaged. She slipped it into Claire’s palm.
“Hide it.”
Charles stormed into the room just as firefighters arrived.
“What have you done?” he demanded.
Claire held up the scorched deed. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
For a moment, Charles looked less like a wealthy patriarch and more like a trapped animal.
Then his expression hardened.
“That document is meaningless.”
“Then why did someone try to burn it?”
He turned toward the guard. “Remove her from my property.”
Officer Ramirez stepped into the doorway. “Nobody is removing anyone until we understand why evidence connected to an assault just caught fire.”
Claire closed her fist around the flash drive.
As paramedics guided her outside, her phone vibrated.
A banking alert filled the screen.
May you like
A new line of credit had been opened against her condo.
The amount was $1.8 million.
