“We shouldn’t talk here.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Good. You shouldn’t trust me either.”
That answer unsettled me.
She pointed toward the photographs.
“But those are real.”
“Why was he following me?”
“Because of April 14.”
“What happened?”
Mara stared at me.
“You really don’t remember.”
I felt anger rise through the fear.
“Stop saying that.”
“On April 14, four years ago, someone accessed a restricted server at Hartwell & Pierce. Thousands of documents were copied—financial records, shell-company transactions, insurance fraud, payoffs.”
“I worked in customer claims.”
“You had temporary archive access.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“I know.”
Her next words came quietly.
**“Your brother did.”**
I froze.
“My brother?”
My older brother, Daniel, had died five years earlier in a car accident.
“That’s impossible.”
“Daniel wasn’t just an accountant,” Mara said. “He had discovered that Hartwell & Pierce was laundering money through fraudulent claims. Before he died, he hid evidence inside their archive system.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“On April 14, you accidentally found part of it.”
My knees felt weak.
“Callum was sent to find out what you knew.”
The station noise disappeared around me.
“Sent by whom?”
“By me.”
I stared at her.
Mara swallowed.
“I was a federal investigator.”
Was.
The word mattered.
“What was Callum?”
“An intelligence contractor. Surveillance, asset protection, undercover work.”
I looked at the photograph again.
Target confirmed.
“So our meeting…”
“Was arranged.”
The pain was immediate.
Four years of birthdays.
Christmas mornings.
Sunday breakfasts.
His proposal in the rain.
Our wedding vows.
Every memory suddenly had a crack running through it.
“He married me because of an investigation?”
Mara’s expression softened.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because something happened that none of us planned.”
Before she could continue, my phone rang again.
Callum.
This time I answered.
“What did you do to me?”
Silence.
Then:
“Where are you?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Please, just tell me where you are.”
“Did you follow me before we met?”
His silence answered first.
“Yes.”
My eyes filled.
“Was the coffee shop an accident?”
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