Chapter 22 - Nobody Sleeps Alone
For the next seventy-two hours, nobody in our family slept alone.
Eleanor stayed with Vern’s sister.
Richard moved temporarily into my house.
Harper and Milo remained with Adam’s parents.
Every Reed Recovery employee received instructions to vary routes and avoid arriving by themselves.
I hated it.
Not because I was afraid.
Because fear had once again become the center of our family.
For decades, Richard feared poverty.
Harper feared looking ordinary.
Mom feared confrontation.
I feared needing any of them.
Different fear.
Same prison.
The laptop found inside Lawson’s Escalade gave investigators more than threats.
It contained spreadsheets.
Hundreds of fraudulent accounts.
Mercer’s network had been larger than Cynthia knew.
Lawson managed collections.
Cross manipulated filings.
Cynthia notarized documents.
Other employees handled identity information.
Some victims had paid debts they never owed because fighting seemed more expensive.
One seventy-two-year-old widow had sold her house.
A mechanic in Terre Haute lost his repair shop.
A married couple in Muncie spent four years paying a lien created under someone else’s signature.
When Bell told us, Vern sat silently for a long time.
“This was never about us.”
“No,” Bell said.
“You were one target.”
That changed something inside me.
Until then, I wanted Mercer stopped because he threatened my business.
Now I wanted every victim found.
Melissa volunteered her firm to help review claims.
I offered Reed Recovery’s office staff.
Richard spent nights sorting names.
Harper joined remotely.
Even Adam helped.
For the first time in our family’s history, the same stubbornness that once tore us apart was pointed in the same direction.
Then Lawson called Harper.
She was at Adam’s parents’ house.
The number showed unknown.
She answered before thinking.
“Hello?”
“Your brother found my files.”
She froze.
Adam immediately started recording.
“Wade?”
“You know who I am.”
“What do you want?”
“My laptop.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Your brother does.”
“No. Police do.”
Silence.
“You always were stupid.”
Harper flinched.
A few years earlier, those words might have destroyed her.
This time she inhaled.
“What do you want?”
“Tell Nolan to bring the laptop to the old Mercer auction yard tomorrow night.”
“He can’t.”
“Then people get hurt.”
Harper’s voice remained steady.
“Wade, the police already copied everything.”
Another silence.
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
“You don’t know anything.”
Harper looked toward Adam.
Then she did something that surprised everyone.
“You’re right.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know anything for years.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I signed documents because I was stupid. I lied because I was ashamed. I hurt people because I cared more about appearances than truth.”
Lawson remained silent.
“But I know something now.”
“What?”
“You can’t scare me into making another bad decision.”
The line went dead.
Bell traced the call to a tower outside Delphi.
Officers searched.
Nothing.
But Lawson had made a mistake.
He confirmed the old Mercer auction yard mattered.
Police obtained a warrant.
The property had been abandoned for almost twenty years.
Collapsed office.
Rusting fence.
Overgrown vehicle lanes.
Inside an old maintenance building, investigators found filing cabinets sealed behind plywood.
Records dating back decades.
Vern recognized names.
Some went back to Glen’s father.
The fraud had roots stretching before Glen Mercer ever met Harper.
One cabinet contained original documents used to create fake debts.
Another held blank notarized forms.
Then investigators found a locked floor safe.
Inside were cash, jewelry, passports, and six hard drives.
Mercer’s attorney stopped negotiating the next morning.
By lunchtime, prosecutors announced a major financial-crime case.
But Wade Lawson remained missing.
That evening, I found Dad sitting at my kitchen table.
“You okay?”
He shook his head.
“What?”
He slid a photograph toward me.
Investigators had copied it from Lawson’s files.
It showed Richard leaving Reed Recovery two months earlier.
The picture was taken from across the road.
On the back was handwriting.
OLD MAN FIRST.
Dad looked up.
“He wasn’t planning to start with you.”
I sat down.
May you like
For the first time since the brake sabotage, I saw genuine fear in Richard’s eyes.
“He was planning to start with me.”
