She was the smartest person I had ever known who carried three different
calculators.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“That phrase from you usually ends badly.”
“I think my wife and her boyfriend are planning something involving my house.”
“How romantic.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I explained the call.
Rebecca
stopped joking.
“Send me everything.”
“There’s more.”
I told her Derek owned a gym.
She asked for the company name.
I gave it to her.
Then she said something strange.
“Don’t sign anything.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“No. Cole. Anything. Not a waiver. Not a gym release. Nothing.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That sentence stuck with me.
By Thursday morning, Rebecca called again.
“Your wife transferred seventy-two thousand dollars out of the joint savings account eight months ago.”
I sat up in the motel bed.
“What?”
“Three transfers. Twenty-four thousand each.”
I opened my banking app.
I almost never checked that account.
My commissions went into another account used for
the mortgage and household expenses.
Claire had handled most everyday banking.
The savings balance was far lower
than I remembered.
“Where did it go?”
“Shell company.”
“What company?”
“Ridge Performance Holdings.”
My stomach tightened.
“Derek?”
“Indirectly. Ridge owns forty percent of Apex Predator Martial Arts.”
I said nothing.
Rebecca continued.
“And somebody took a sixty-five-thousand-dollar home equity line against your house.”
I stood.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I never signed that.”
“I suspected you’d say that.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Whose signature?”
“Yours.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“Send it.”
The document arrived.
There was my name.
Cole Mercer.
My signature.
Except it wasn’t.
It was close.
Very close.
Good enough for someone who had watched me sign Christmas cards and insurance forms for fourteen years.
