Chapter 8 - BRENDA TALKS

Brenda lasted four hours in the interview room.

At first she denied everything.

Then Ortiz showed her the ledger.

Brenda blamed Mark.

“He handled the accounts.”

“You changed the transfer destination,” Ortiz said.

“He told me how.”

“You signed the trust papers.”

“Peter said it was legal.”

“You locked your parents in a basement.”

Brenda began crying.

“They were going to ruin everything.”

Ortiz leaned forward. “What was going to happen at Hawthorne Care?”

Brenda wiped her face.

“It’s a nursing facility.”

“It closed two years ago.”

Silence.

Shawn’s stomach tightened.

Ortiz placed a photograph on the table.

Hawthorne Care was a half-abandoned private building forty miles away.

The owner was Peter Vale’s brother.

Brenda looked away.

“What was the plan?” Ortiz repeated.

Brenda whispered, “Temporary placement.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who was paying?”

“Mark.”

“With whose money?”

No answer.

Ortiz pushed the ledger closer.

“Did your parents agree to go?”

Brenda’s voice broke.

“No.”

Shawn walked out of the observation room before he said something he would regret.

In the hallway, his phone rang.

His company’s chief financial officer, Ben Harmon.

“Shawn, sorry to call this late, but your sister tried to access your personal investment account tonight.”

Shawn stopped walking.

“What?”

“The security system blocked it. The login came from your hometown.”

He looked through the glass at Brenda.

This was bigger than stealing from their parents.

“How much could she see?”

“Potentially everything connected to your old recovery email.”

Shawn remembered something.

Years ago, before his company had money or lawyers, Brenda helped him create that email.

She knew the answers to his original security questions.

Ben continued.

“There’s more. Someone initiated a $250,000 wire yesterday.”

“Where?”

“A company called Pine Ridge Holdings.”

The same company buying his parents’ house.

Shawn looked at Ortiz.

Now he understood the Christmas closeout.

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They had not only planned to steal his parents’ property.

They were preparing to steal from him too.