Chapter 6 - The Missing Money)
The financial investigation began with numbers.
One hundred seventy-eight thousand dollars borrowed against the house.
One hundred forty-six thousand transferred out within four months.
Thirty-two thousand used for debts, household expenses, and purchases.
The missing money had been moved through multiple accounts.
Derek controlled at least two.
Natalie controlled one.
A fourth account belonged to a newly formed company called Red River Property Solutions.
Jack had never heard of it.
Sarah had.
Not the company specifically.
The pattern.
She spread documents across the conference table.
"Shell company."
Jack frowned.
"For what?"
"Could be legitimate. Could be nothing. Could be how Derek moved money."
A forensic accountant named Paul Grayson joined them.
He had spent twenty years tracing concealed marital assets and fraud proceeds.
He circled three transfers.
"These concern me."
Jack leaned closer.
Twenty-eight thousand.
Thirty-five thousand.
Forty-one thousand.
Paul pointed.
"Each moves from loan proceeds into Red River. Then out within forty-eight hours."
"Where?"
"We don't know yet."
"Can we find out?"
"If we get records."
Sarah had already issued subpoenas in the divorce case.
The bank's fraud unit was conducting its own investigation.
Military legal services connected Jack with an attorney experienced in Servicemembers Civil Relief Act issues.
Suddenly, the affair seemed almost small.
Painful.
Humiliating.
But small compared with the machinery Derek and Natalie had built.
Jack returned to temporary housing with Sophie.
He rented a two-bedroom apartment near her school.
The first night, Sophie stood in the doorway of her room.
There was a mattress.
A lamp.
Two boxes.
Jack looked apologetic.
"It's not much."
Sophie walked inside.
She placed her stuffed fox on the pillow.
Then smiled.
"It's ours."
Jack swallowed.
"Yeah."
"Ours is enough."
That sentence nearly broke him.
He turned away under the excuse of opening another box.
Sophie pretended not to notice.
Over the next week, they developed routines.
Breakfast at 6:45.
School at 7:50.
Homework at the kitchen table.
Dinner.
A walk.
Phone calls with Carol.
Sometimes Sophie woke screaming.
Jack would sit outside her room until she fell asleep again.
She did not want him sitting beside the bed.
Not because she feared him.
Because she wanted to prove she could sleep alone.
"I have to get used to you leaving again," she said one night.
Jack felt the sentence like a blade.
"I'm not leaving soon."
"But soldiers leave."
Jack sat on the floor outside her doorway.
"Sometimes."
"What if Mom makes you?"
Jack looked at her.
"Your mom can't order the Army."
Sophie almost smiled.
Then she whispered, "She made everything else happen."
Jack had no answer.
He began seeing a counselor through military services.
At first, he hated it.
He felt like every question reduced his life to symptoms.
Sleep.
Anger.
Hypervigilance.
Stress.
Then the counselor, Dr. Elaine Harper, stopped asking clinical questions.
"What are you actually afraid of?"
Jack stared at her.
"That I'm becoming what Natalie says I am."
"What does she say you are?"
"Dangerous."
Elaine waited.
Jack looked down.
"I punched Derek."
"Yes."
"I held a candle near her face."
"Yes."
"I scared them."
"Yes."
Jack looked up.
Elaine did not rescue him.
That was why he trusted her.
"I shouldn't have done it."
"No."
"If Sophie had seen me..."
"She didn't."
"But what if she had?"
Elaine leaned forward.
"Then you would have had to explain that adults can fail in terrible moments and still choose what they become afterward."
Jack was quiet.
Elaine continued.
"You can't undo fifteen seconds."
Jack looked at her.
"You can decide whether those fifteen seconds define the next fifteen years."
That sentence stayed with him.
Meanwhile, Natalie was unraveling.
Derek remained missing.
Her attorney became less sympathetic after learning she had signed loan documents using Jack's name.
"You told me you had authority."
"I thought I did."
"Did you sign his signature?"
Natalie stared at the floor.
Reeves closed his eyes.
"Please tell me you didn't."
"Derek said the power of attorney allowed it."
"It did not."
"He said banks do it all the time."
"Banks do not authorize forgery all the time."
Natalie's voice rose.
"I didn't know."
Reeves leaned forward.
"Did you read the document you signed?"
Silence.
"Natalie."
"No."
"Did you receive money?"
"Yes."
"Did you spend it?"
"Some."
"How much?"
"Maybe thirty thousand."
"On what?"
"Credit cards. Furniture. Travel."
"Travel with Derek?"
Natalie's face tightened.
"Yes."
Reeves stood and walked toward the window.
"What aren't you telling me?"
Natalie said nothing.
He turned.
"What aren't you telling me?"
She whispered, "There was a company."
"What company?"
"Red River Property Solutions."
His expression changed.
"What did it do?"
"I don't know."
"You transferred money to a company you knew nothing about?"
"Derek said we were buying distressed property."
"Did you buy property?"
"I thought we did."
"You thought?"
"He showed me listings."
Reeves stared at her.
"Do you own anything through Red River?"
"I don't know."
He sat down slowly.
"Natalie, you need criminal counsel."
Her face went pale.
"I'm not a criminal."
"I'm not saying you are."
"You just did."
"I'm saying you may be the target of a fraud investigation."
Natalie's hands began shaking.
"Jack did this."
"No."
She looked at him.
Reeves's voice softened.
"Whatever your husband does emotionally, he did not sign your name to those transfers."
Natalie stared at him.
For the first time, someone she had hired to defend her refused to help her blame Jack.
That afternoon, she drove to Carol's house.
Sophie was not there.
Natalie knocked anyway.
Carol opened the door.
"You can't come here without arranging it."
"I need to talk to you."
Carol crossed her arms.
"About what?"
"Derek stole from me."
Carol stared at her.
Natalie began crying.
Not courtroom tears.
Real ones.
"I think he took everything."
Carol's face showed pain.
But not surprise.
"You brought him into your home."
"I know."
"Into Sophie's home."
"I know."
"You told your daughter her father didn't want her."
Natalie wiped her face.
"I was angry."
"At an eight-year-old?"
Natalie flinched.
Carol stepped closer.
"Do you know what she asked me the first night she stayed here?"
Natalie shook her head.
"She asked if fathers stop loving their children when mothers get new boyfriends."
Natalie closed her eyes.
Carol's voice broke.
"You did that."
"I made a mistake."
"No. A mistake is forgetting an appointment. You built a lie and made your child live inside it."
Natalie turned away.
Then Carol said something that stopped her.
"If you want any chance of getting Sophie back, stop protecting yourself long enough to tell the truth."
Natalie looked at her mother.
"The truth will ruin me."
Carol's answer was immediate.
"Maybe."
Natalie started crying again.
Carol did not comfort her.
"But lying will ruin Sophie."
That evening, Natalie opened her laptop.
She found an old folder Derek had told her to delete.
Inside were scanned loan applications.
Copies of Jack's identification.
Wire instructions.
And one document Natalie had never seen before.
A purchase agreement.
Property address: 417 Briarwood Lane.
Purchase price: $312,000.
Buyer: Red River Property Solutions.
Natalie's heart began pounding.
Because she knew that address.
Everyone in town knew it.
417 Briarwood Lane was a vacant house overlooking the river.
And three months earlier, Derek had taken Natalie there.
He had stood in the empty kitchen, wrapped his arms around her, and whispered:
"One day, this will be ours."
Natalie stared at the purchase agreement.
Then at the buyer signature.
Derek Cole.
Below it was another name.
A woman's name.
Not Natalie.
Amanda Cole.
Natalie whispered it aloud.
"Amanda?"
Then she remembered something Derek had told her on their second date.
He had never been married.
Natalie searched the name.
The first result contained a wedding photograph.
Derek Cole and Amanda Cole.
Married nine years.
Still married.
Natalie stared at the screen.
May you like
Her husband had not been the only spouse betrayed.
And Derek's disappearance was suddenly connected to something much larger than a stolen loan.
