Chapter 8 - UNIT 214
Rosa Alvarez was seventy-one and furious that no one had called her sooner.
She lived three doors from the Bennetts and had spent the last year watching Travis turn Erin’s home into a place where everyone whispered.
“I told her to throw him out,” Rosa said. “She kept saying he had nowhere else to go.”
Unit 214 contained no furniture.
Just plastic bins.
Each was labeled in Erin’s handwriting.
BANK.
BEN.
TRAVIS.
MEDICAL.
Inside were copies of canceled checks, text-message printouts, loan applications, and documents connected to the life-insurance policy left by Erin’s late husband, Ben.
The policy had created protected accounts for Mia and Caleb.
Travis had tried to borrow against them twice.
Both requests had been rejected.
Then Dana found the audio recorder.
The first file was Erin’s voice.
“If anything happens to me, Travis has been pressuring me to sign financial authority over the children’s survivor benefits. He says family should share. I told him no.”
The second file was Travis.
His voice was low, angry.
“You’re sitting on money while I’m drowning.”
“That money belongs to my kids.”
“You think Ben would care?”
“Don’t say his name.”
Then a crash.
Erin crying.
The recording ended.
Rosa covered her mouth.
Dana opened another bin.
At the bottom was a photocopy of an old child-welfare report.
Eight years earlier, Travis’s girlfriend had a four-year-old son named Cody.
Cody had been found alone outside an apartment complex after midnight.
The report said Travis was supposed to be watching him.
The case disappeared after the boy’s mother withdrew her statement.
Attached to the copy was a note from Erin.
Mom paid for her to leave town.
Rosa went still.
“Mom?”
Dana looked at the name on the original report.
Carol Bennett.
Erin and Travis’s mother.
The woman Travis had listed as the children’s emergency backup guardian.
Then Dana’s phone rang.
Hospital security.
May you like
Carol Bennett had just arrived.
And she was demanding custody of Mia and Caleb.
