Part 9

The next morning, my dad insisted on going to the hardware store himself.

“I’m not hiding,” he said, pulling on his jacket with shaky determination. His voice was rougher than usual, like his throat still remembered the oxygen deprivation. “I refuse to live like prey.”

Miles offered to go instead. I offered. My mom practically begged.

My dad shook his head once. “I’m going.”

So we went as a unit—me, Miles, my parents—walking into the hardware store under harsh white lights that made everything look too sharp. The aisles smelled like lumber and plastic. Somewhere, a radio played classic rock quietly, cheerful in the wrong way.

My dad picked up two packs of batteries, held them up, and looked at me like he was making a point. “These,” he said. “This is what they thought would beat us.”

I swallowed hard. “Let’s just pay and go.”

At the counter, the cashier was a middle-aged man with tired eyes and a tape measure clipped to his belt. He scanned the batteries with a beep that sounded like punctuation.

Then his gaze slid past us and froze for half a second.

Not at my dad.

At Miles.

Something in the cashier’s face tightened like recognition.

Miles noticed. “Can I help you?” he asked calmly.

The cashier’s mouth opened, then closed again. He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “You’re… with the Quinn family, right?”

My stomach clenched. “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

The cashier hesitated, then reached under the counter and pulled out a small spiral notebook—one of those cheap ones with a bent corner. He flipped a few pages with rough fingers.

“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I didn’t want to be involved.”

“Involved in what?” Miles asked.

The cashier tapped a page with his pen. “A guy came in here a few weeks back. Bought duct sealant, a flue vent kit, and asked about… how long it takes for fumes to build up in a closed house.”

My throat went cold.

The cashier glanced toward the aisle like he was afraid of being overheard. “He wasn’t asking like a homeowner. He was asking like… someone planning.”

“Did you get his name?” I whispered.

The cashier shook his head, then pointed at the notebook again. “But I wrote down the card type and the last four digits. My manager tells us to track weird transactions. He paid with a prepaid card. But he also used a loyalty account number for the discount.”

Miles’ eyes narrowed. “You have the number?”

The cashier nodded, then ripped out the page and slid it across the counter like a secret.

My hands shook as I took it. The paper smelled like ink and dust.

Hollis was at his desk when we showed up again. He took the page, studied it, then nodded once. “This could be something.”

Miles’ voice was steady. “The intimidation package last night means someone’s still active.”

Hollis leaned back, rubbing his temple. “We pulled Owen’s contact history. He had messages with a number saved as LEO HVAC. We assumed it was a contractor.”

My stomach flipped. “Leo?”

Hollis nodded. “We’re going to bring him in. If he’s the one who touched the furnace, he might be the voice on your voicemail. Or he might know who is.”

By the afternoon, Hollis called us in again.

Leo wasn’t what I pictured when I heard contractor. He wasn’t a burly man in worn boots. He was thin, sharp-faced, with neat hair and a clean jacket like he wanted to look respectable. He smelled faintly of cologne, not sweat.

He sat across from Hollis, legs crossed, and tried to smile like this was a misunderstanding.

“I do installs,” Leo said smoothly. “Repairs. Vent checks. Totally normal.”

Hollis slid a photo across the table: the loosened vent pipe.

Leo’s smile slipped. “I tightened that,” he said quickly. “I did. They said there was a rattle.”

“They?” Hollis asked.

Leo’s eyes flicked toward me and my parents, then away. “The fiancé. Owen. And the sister. Kara.”

My mom flinched like the name physically hurt her.

Hollis leaned in. “Why were you there when the homeowners weren’t present?”

Leo shrugged, too casual. “They said they had permission. They had keys.”

Hollis didn’t blink. “Did you disable alarms?”

Leo’s face changed. A flash of annoyance. Then fear. “No. I don’t touch alarms. That’s not my job.”

“But you saw them,” Hollis pressed. “Didn’t you.”

Leo’s jaw tightened. His eyes darted, calculating. “Kara told Owen the parents were ‘sensitive to noise.’ She said the beeping was driving them crazy. She joked about ‘silencing the nanny.’”

My stomach twisted.

“And?” Hollis said.

Leo exhaled sharply, like he was mad at himself for talking. “I saw Kara take the hallway detector off the wall. She popped the batteries out and put them in her pocket. I thought… whatever. People do dumb stuff. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think two unconscious people might be connected to missing batteries?” Miles’ voice cut in, low and angry.

Leo’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t know! They told me they were upgrading. They told me it was safe.”

Hollis slid his phone across the table and played the voicemail.

Leo’s face went pale. “That’s not me,” he said fast. “That’s not my voice.”

Hollis watched him carefully. “Then who is it.”

Leo swallowed. “Owen had a friend,” he said. “Someone he called when he wanted things handled without questions. I only met him once. A guy named Graham. Tall. Calm. Always smiling.”

My blood chilled at the memory of the voice: smiling into the phone.

Hollis sat back, eyes sharpening. “Graham what?”

Leo shook his head, panic creeping in. “I don’t know his last name. Owen never said it. Just… Graham.”

Hollis scribbled something down, then looked up at me. “We’ll track Owen’s connections. If Graham exists, we’ll find him.”

As we left the station, Miles’ phone buzzed.

He looked at the screen and his face went tight.

“What?” I asked.

He turned the phone toward me.

It was an email notification—from a digital document service.

Subject: Power of Attorney Signed.

And in the preview line, it showed the signer name.

Mine.

I stared until my vision blurred, my chest tightening like someone had wrapped a cord around it.

Because Kara hadn’t only planned to kill our parents.

She’d planned to make it look like I helped.

 

Part 10

I didn’t remember walking to the car.

One moment I was standing outside the police station, holding my breath against the cold, and the next I was in the passenger seat with the door shut, the world muffled and too close.

Miles’ hands hovered near the steering wheel like he wasn’t sure whether to drive or pull me into his arms first.

“That email doesn’t mean it’s real,” he said carefully. “It could be attempted. It could be spoofed.”

“But it said signed,” I whispered. My voice sounded far away. “It said my name.”

Miles stared straight ahead, jaw tight. “This is what she does. She builds a story. She sets pieces in place.”

I thought of my mom’s ripped note: Don’t trust—

My stomach rolled. “She was warning me,” I said. “She was warning me and I was busy. I was… living.”

Miles reached over and squeezed my hand. His palm was warm, steady. “We’re not going to let Kara write the ending.”

At home, my inbox had three more notifications—document requests, signature reminders, a final notice that made my skin crawl.

Miles opened them on his laptop, not letting me touch the mouse like I might contaminate the evidence.

The documents were dated for the week my parents collapsed. The IP addresses—whatever that meant—weren’t from my apartment. The phone number attached to the account wasn’t mine.

But the signature field showed a scrawl that looked disturbingly close to my handwriting. Close enough to fool someone who wanted to be fooled.

I pressed my fingers to my temple. My head felt full of cotton. “How did she even—”

Miles’ eyes flicked up. “She’s watched you sign things your entire life. Birthday cards. Holiday checks. She’s had access to your mail. Your old school forms. She could’ve practiced.”

Practice. Like forging my identity was a hobby.

Hollis called us in again that evening. The office smelled like burnt coffee and stale air, like nobody had slept there in weeks.

He studied the digital forms and nodded slowly. “This is good for us,” he said.

“Good?” I snapped, surprise turning to anger. “How is this good?”

“Because it proves premeditation,” Hollis said, calm. “Kara and Owen weren’t improvising. They were building legal cover. They were preparing to move assets fast. And they were preparing a scapegoat.”

My throat tightened. “Me.”

Hollis held my gaze. “Yes. But they did it sloppily. The metadata points away from you. We can show it wasn’t you.”

I wanted to believe him. I wanted the world to be the kind of place where truth automatically won.

But I’d just learned how easy it was to remove two batteries and almost erase two lives.

Back at my parents’ apartment, my mom sat at the small kitchen table with a pen in her hand. She wasn’t writing. She was just holding it, staring at the blank page like she was trying to force reality to make sense.

“I keep thinking,” she said softly, “if I could just talk to her… maybe she’d tell me why.”

My dad’s face tightened. “We know why.”

My mom’s eyes flashed. “No,” she whispered. “I know what you’re saying. Money. The house. But why did she become… that.”

I sat down across from her, the chair legs scraping lightly. “Mom—”

She lifted her hand, stopping me. Her fingers trembled. “She’s still my daughter.”

The sentence landed heavy.

My dad’s voice was low, rough. “So is Jamie.”

My mom flinched, tears slipping out anyway. “I’m not choosing,” she said, voice breaking. “I’m just… I need to see her face and hear her say it.”

My stomach twisted. “You want to visit her?”

My mom’s gaze lifted to mine. “Just once. I need… closure.”

I imagined Kara behind a glass partition, her eyes calculating, her voice soft and poisonous. I imagined her turning my mother’s love into a weapon.

Miles’ hand found mine under the table.

My dad stared at my mom for a long, silent moment. Then he looked at me, his eyes tired and fierce.

“We don’t owe her closure,” he said. “But your mother is bleeding inside. And she’ll bleed until she knows.”

My throat tightened. “Mom, if you go—”

“I won’t go alone,” she said quickly, almost pleading. “Jamie, please. Come with me. Just… come with me.”

The room felt suddenly too small. The air smelled like tea and fear.

I looked at Miles. His face was calm, but his eyes were asking the same question my stomach was screaming.

Could my mother survive one conversation with the person who tried to kill her?
Part FINAL