Chapter 11 - THE STORAGE UNIT
I did not go alone.
Maya stayed two cars behind me.
Elias followed from another direction.
Police had not agreed to intervene because Lauren had not made a direct threat.
The storage facility sat beside an abandoned industrial road.
Snow had begun to fall.
Lauren waited inside Unit 218.
My laptop rested on a metal table.
The missing drive sat beside it.
Boxes filled the unit from floor to ceiling.
“What is all this?” I asked.
“Insurance files.”
“Whose?”
“Your mother’s.”
Lauren looked exhausted.
Her expensive coat was stained with dust.
“I didn’t know the truth until last year.”
“What truth?”
She handed me a folder.
My mother, Helen Carter, had not simply funded Daniel’s practice.
She had discovered irregular payments connected to Richard’s earlier medical businesses.
She planned to remove him from the partnership.
Three days before she could present her evidence, she suffered a stroke.
Daniel recommended an emergency procedure.
She never regained consciousness.
I opened the surgical consent form.
My signature appeared as the family witness.
I had not signed it.
“Daniel forged this too?”
Lauren nodded.
“He said there wasn’t time.”
“Why was the form stored here?”
“Because your mother had refused the procedure.”
The room tilted.
“She refused?”
“She signed an advance directive.”
“Daniel knew?”
“Yes.”
I remembered standing beside my mother’s hospital bed while Daniel told me the surgery was her only chance.
I had trusted him.
I had thanked him for trying to save her.
He had held me while she died.
“Did the procedure kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
Lauren’s voice broke.
“But after she died, Richard used Daniel’s access to remove her investigation files.”
I looked at the boxes.
“Why keep them?”
“Insurance.”
“Against whom?”
“Everyone.”
Lauren had spent years helping Richard hide money.
When she realized he planned to blame her for the Northstar accounts, she began copying documents.
She had not come to protect me.
She had come to save herself.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Immunity.”
“I can’t give you that.”
“You can tell investigators I cooperated.”
“You broke into my house.”
“I’ll admit it.”
“You lied to the children.”
She looked away.
“I believed Daniel when he said you were leaving.”
“You helped create the fake messages.”
Her silence told me everything.
Lauren had used old texts from me and changed the words.
Every member of the family had played a role.
Some larger.
Some smaller.
None innocent.
A vehicle stopped outside.
Lauren’s eyes widened.
“That’s my father.”
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The storage unit door began to rise.
Richard stood on the other side holding a can of gasoline.
