“I don’t know what key he’s talking about. He never told me about this account.”
Reeves believed that possibility because investigators had already established how extensively Owen had operated without my knowledge. He had used my laptop and identity to authorize transactions while presenting himself as Caleb Morrison, which meant hiding another financial asset in my name was entirely consistent with the life he had secretly constructed.
The difference was that this secret had survived his arrest. Victor Hale had never surrendered all of his contacts, and Reeves had already warned me that sending the photograph of Noah suggested people outside prison were still acting on behalf of the network.
“Victor is still in prison. How can any of this still be happening?”
“Prison doesn’t stop organized networks.”
That answer changed the way I saw the previous fourteen months. I had treated Owen’s conviction as the closing chapter of our ordeal, but the photograph, the men in my backyard, and the offshore account showed that his arrest had only removed the person I knew from something much larger.
The most terrifying part wasn’t the money. It was realizing that whoever wanted access to it had already watched Noah closely enough to photograph him leaving kindergarten, then reached our backyard despite FBI surveillance simply to prove they could get near us.
“They were sending a message.”
“What do they want from me?”
Mara’s expression remained tense as she looked again at the account statement. Neither she nor Reeves could give me a complete answer because Owen’s note contained the only clue investigators currently had.
The words on that page left me with an impossible problem. Owen claimed I possessed a key to $11.4 million, his remaining associates apparently believed him, and I couldn’t give them something I didn’t even know existed.
For years, I had wondered how I failed to recognize the man behind Caleb Morrison. He had been convincing enough to build a marriage, raise a child beside me, and use my identity without making me question the ordinary life surrounding us.
