Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Lied
"I didn't take anything," Lucie told Mercer.
"That's what you said in court." His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Look how that turned out."
She held his gaze while her fingers folded around the brass key in her pocket. Raines waited at the hall junction, pretending to study a clipboard. When he brushed past, Lucie slipped the key into the loose cuff of his uniform.
He didn't react. That was the first reason she began to trust him.
Her lawyer arrived that afternoon. Mara Finch was twenty-eight and sharp-eyed, carrying a stuffed legal folder.
"I found the records you asked about," Mara said through the visiting-room glass. "Your brother wasn't just an accountant for Vale Transit. For eight months, he took payments from the company."
Lucie's stomach tightened. "He was documenting them."
"Maybe. But the money went into an account in his own name. And a week before the warehouse fire, he withdrew eighty thousand dollars in cash."
"Thomas wouldn't sell people out."
Mara hesitated. "Lucie, the man who found his car said he heard him arguing with a woman. The name on the witness statement is Valérie Moreau."
Lucie closed her eyes. She remembered Thomas at their mother's kitchen table, drawing four points beneath a broken circle on a napkin. If anything happens, find the person who recognizes this. But don't believe the first story you hear.
"Can you get me the full statement?" she asked.
"The original is missing. All I have is a scan, and a corner is torn off."
Before the visit ended, Mara slid a photograph beneath the glass: a little girl standing beside a school bus, smiling around a missing front tooth.
"Nora took this yesterday," she said. "Rachel wanted you to have it."
May you like
Lucie smiled until she noticed the reflection in the bus window. A man stood across the street, wearing a dark coat.
The same man she had seen in the guard tower.
