Chapter 6: What Was on the Drive
The forensics team had set up in the Westwood estate's study.
It was nearly two in the morning.
The ballroom below had been cleared.
The catering staff were g\*ne.
The three hundred guests had gone home to their own lives, carrying the night's events like something they weren't sure they had actually witnessed.
Natalie sat in one of the study's leather chairs with a cup of tea going cold in her hands.
Rachel had taken Emma to one of the guest rooms.
The little girl had not woken when she was carried.
She still held the rabbit.
Margaret had not left.
She sat in the corner of the study in her silver couture gown, looking smaller than Adrian had ever seen her.
The forensics technician — a young woman named Priya — inserted the USB drive into a secured laptop.
The drive was not encrypted.
Claire had not needed it to be.
She had hidden it well enough.
Priya opened the drive.
A single folder.
Inside, eleven files.
"Audio recordings," Priya said.
"And three documents."
Harlan leaned over her shoulder.
"Play the first audio."
The recording was low quality — the kind made on a phone held in a pocket or a bag.
But the voices were clear enough.
Madison's voice first.
*"You need to think about what you're doing, Claire.
Adrian will never believe you over me.
We've been friends for fifteen years."*
Then Claire's voice.
Tighter.
Controlled.
*"I have the emails, Madison.
I have the transfer records.
I know what you did to the Hargrove account."*
A pause.
*"Those emails don't prove anything."*
*"They prove you used my name to authorize a transfer you had no right to make.
That's fraud.
That's a crjme."*
*"Claire —"*
*"And I think you've been in my house.
I think you've been going through my things.
I changed the locks last month and somehow you still got in.
So I'm asking you directly: do you have a key to my house that I don't know about?"*
Silence on the recording.
Then Madison's voice, very quiet.
*"You should be careful, Claire.
You really should."*
The recording ended.
No one in the study spoke.
Natalie set down her tea.
"She recorded her," Natalie said.
"She knew."
"She was building a case," Adrian said.
"She told me she had something to tell me about Madison.
She was going to show me all of this when I got home."
Priya opened the second audio file.
This one was a phone call.
Madison's voice only — Claire must have recorded her own end of a call.
*"I'm telling you, she's going to go to the board.
She has the transfer records and she's not going to let it go.
I need more time."*
A man's voice on the other end.
Muffled, but audible.
*"How much more time?"*
*"Two weeks.
Maybe three."*
*"Madison, if she goes to the board —"*
*"She won't.
I'll handle it."*
The call ended.
Harlan straightened.
"There's a second person."
"Can you identify the voice?" Adrian asked.
"We'll run it." Harlan looked at Priya.
"The documents."
Priya opened the first document.
A spreadsheet.
Columns of figures, account numbers, transfer dates.
At the top, a header: *Hargrove Foundation — Unauthorized Transfers — compiled by C.
Westwood.*
Claire had done the accounting herself.
Every transfer.
Every date.
Every amount.
The total at the bottom of the column was four point three million dollars.
Margaret made a sound from the corner.
Adrian looked at her.
"Did you know about the Hargrove account?" he asked.
"No." Her voice was barely audible.
"I knew Madison handled some of the foundation's investments.
I didn't know —" She stopped.
"You didn't ask."
"No."
"Because you trusted her."
Margaret looked at her hands.
"I introduced them.
Madison and Claire.
Years ago.
I thought they would be good for each other." A pause.
"I thought Madison was good for this family."
"She stole four million dollars from a charitable foundation using Claire's name," Adrian said.
"And when Claire found out, Madison threatened her.
And then Claire d\*ed."
The words sat in the room.
Harlan's phone buzzed.
He stepped away to answer it.
Natalie was looking at the spreadsheet on the screen.
"Claire sent me a text," she said slowly.
"Three years ago.
A week before she d\*ed." She pulled out her phone and scrolled back — far back, through years of messages.
"I never understood it.
I thought she was just being strange." She found it and held the phone up.
*If I ever need you to remember something for me, I'll say the word 'rabbit.' Remember that.*
The room went very still.
"Rabbit," Adrian said.
"Emma's rabbit," Natalie said.
"Emma carries it everywhere.
Rachel said Claire gave it to Emma herself, a few weeks before the accident." She lowered the phone.
"She was leaving a trail.
She was leaving it through a four-year-old child because she knew no one would think to look there."
Harlan came back into the room.
His face had changed.
"That was my colleague in financial crimes," he said.
"We ran the name on the Hargrove transfers.
The secondary account the money was moved into — it's registered to a holding company." He paused.
"The holding company has two directors."
He looked at Adrian.
"Madison Cole," he said.
"And Caleb Westwood."
Adrian's brother.
The room tilted the same way it had tilted upstairs when Emma described the little door behind the dresses.
"Caleb," Adrian said.
"The voice on the second recording," Harlan said.
"We'll confirm it.
But the account registration is already on record."
Adrian sat down.
For a long moment he said nothing.
Then: "Caleb told me to let it go.
Every time I said something felt wrong about the crash, he told me I was obsessing.
He said I was destroying the family."
"Because he needed you to stop looking," Natalie said.
"He needed me to move on." Adrian looked at the spreadsheet on the screen.
"He needed me to marry Madison so she stayed close, stayed quiet, stayed protected." He stood again.
"Where is he?"
"We don't know yet," Harlan said.
"His phone is off."
"He was at the party tonight."
"He left before I arrived.
A neighbor saw his car leaving the estate around the time you called me."
*He knows.
Move her now.*
Madison's text.
Sent from the ballroom.
May you like
She hadn't been texting her driver.
She had been texting Caleb.
