“Is that yours?”
“No.”
My legs went weak.
The case.
The disc.
Now a hidden camera.
This was not an estranged uncle secretly trying to reconnect with his nephew.
Derek was watching us.
Planning something.
The police brought Ethan and me to the station while specialists examined everything.
At first, I assumed the black disc was some kind of tracker.
It wasn’t.
It was literally a key.
The black case had an electronic lock.
The disc behind Ethan’s ear opened it.
Derek had hidden the key on a place no mother would normally search.
Later, Ethan remembered exactly what Derek had told him.
“You’re going to need this when you take the box to your dad’s things.”
Then:
“If your mom finds the box first, she won’t be able to open it. So keep the key secret.”
When police opened the case, they found financial records.
Copies of checks.
Transfer papers.
And a flash drive.
At first glance, the documents made Ryan look guilty.
They appeared to show him moving money out of a small business he had once co-owned with Derek.
There were signatures that looked like Ryan’s.
Withdrawals.
Transfers.
Enough evidence to make my dead husband look like a thief.
I sat in a police station staring at those papers.
Then I noticed one date.
July 14.
Three years earlier.
I knew exactly where Ryan had been that day.
“This can’t be real.”
The detective looked at me.
“What?”
I pointed.
“Ryan was in intensive care on July fourteenth.”
The detective became very still.
“He was in the ICU that entire month. He could barely hold a spoon. He didn’t leave that hospital.”
That date changed everything.
Once investigators looked closely, the entire paper trail began falling apart.
Signatures were almost right.
Not completely.
Dates conflicted with hospital records.
Transactions did not match originals.
The documents were forged.
Planted evidence.
And suddenly, the plan became clear.
Derek was not using Ethan to take something out of my house.
He was using him to put something in.
The investigation into Ryan’s old financial records exposed the truth.
Years earlier, Ryan had discovered that Derek was stealing money.
Not only from their jointly owned business.
From their mother too.
Their mother had trusted Derek to help manage her finances.
Ryan discovered what he was doing.
He confronted him.
And Ryan being Ryan, he made copies of everything.
