Chapter 6 - Laura Begins to Notice
Laura's first real suspicion came from numbers.
Numbers had never betrayed her.
People did.
One Friday afternoon, Laura reviewed her annual credit report before applying for a professional security clearance.
She expected three accounts.
She found seven.
At first she assumed identity theft.
Then she recognized a mailing address.
Their home.
She opened the first account.
Balance:
$47,821.
Second:
$129,440.
Third:
$211,903.
She stopped breathing.
All were legally tied to her.
Two included electronic signatures.
One contained a scanned signature.
It looked exactly like hers.
Except for one detail.
Laura always crossed the final stroke of the L in her surname downward.
The signature on the loan crossed upward.
It was an old habit.
One Mark had never noticed.
Laura printed everything.
When Mark returned home, she almost confronted him.
Then her professional instincts stopped her.
Fraud suspects destroyed records when warned.
She had told clients that sentence hundreds of times.
Now it protected her.
Instead, she smiled.
"Long day?"
Mark loosened his tie.
"Terrible."
"Want wine?"
"Marry me again."
She laughed.
Her stomach twisted.
That night, after Mark fell asleep, Laura checked his phone.
She found nothing.
Too clean.
No banking alerts.
No unknown apps.
No suspicious messages.
Then she checked the router.
A device appeared every night between midnight and two.
A laptop.
Not Mark's work computer.
Laura waited.
At 12:41 a.m., Mark slipped quietly from bed.
She pretended to sleep.
Ten minutes later, she followed.
He entered the basement.
She heard a cabinet unlock.
Laura stood at the top of the stairs.
She could see only a thin line of light beneath the basement office door.
Then she heard Mark speaking.
"No, Robert still hasn't signed."
Pause.
"I said I'll handle him."
Another pause.
Then:
"Laura won't know until it's too late."
Laura's hand tightened around the stair rail.
The floor beneath her seemed to move.
May you like
She returned upstairs before Mark emerged.
For the first time in twelve years, she locked the bathroom door and cried silently.
