Chapter 13 - PLAN B

Miller Freight’s regional warehouse was three hundred miles away.

By the time security reached the records room, the intruder was gone.

Nothing valuable appeared missing.

No computers.

No cash.

Only one cabinet had been opened.

Shawn’s original corporate formation files.

Inside those files were copies of the first bank authorizations he signed when the company was young.

Including the signature used to approve transfers to his parents.

“They needed your signature,” Ben said over video call.

“For what?”

“We’re still checking.”

Detective Ortiz asked for every recent authorization involving Shawn’s personal and corporate accounts.

Two hours later, Ben found it.

A loan application.

$1.8 million.

Collateral: a portion of Shawn’s ownership in Miller Freight.

The application had been submitted by a brokerage firm two weeks earlier.

Shawn had never seen it.

His electronic signature was attached.

The broker listed on the file was Denise Holloway’s brother.

The plan was suddenly clear.

Steal from his parents.

Liquidate their property.

Then use Shawn’s identity to borrow against his company before anyone discovered the first crimes.

The loan was scheduled to fund on December 29.

Two days after the house sale.

Shawn sat silently.

Ortiz looked at him. “We can stop the loan.”

“I know.”

“That’s not what you’re thinking about.”

“No.”

He was thinking about Brenda as a little girl, following him through cornfields.

Brenda at sixteen, crying when he left for college.

Brenda sending him photographs of their parents when he was too busy to visit.

How long had love and resentment lived side by side before resentment won?

That evening, Brenda asked to speak with Shawn from jail.

He almost refused.

Then he agreed.

She sat behind glass in an orange uniform.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Finally Brenda said, “Mark was going to kill you.”

Shawn’s face went still.

“What?”

“That was Plan B.”

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She began crying.

“And I’m the reason he didn’t do it.”