Chapter 4 - The Skeletons in the Suburban Closet
The phone dropped from my paralyzed fingers, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor before dangling by its coiled cord. My chest rose and fell in frantic, shallow gasps as Evelyn’s terrifying words echoed endlessly inside my skull: He picked you because of what your husband does for a living... and because of a secret your family buried ten years ago.
What did David’s job have to do with anything? David was a senior forensic accountant for a mid-sized corporate auditing firm in downtown Los Angeles. He spent his days hunched over spreadsheets, tracing embezzlement trails, corporate tax fraud, and hidden offshore accounts for wealthy conglomerates. It was dry, number-crunching, law-abiding work that involved math, ledgers, and federal compliance. It was about as far away from the dark underworld of the foster care system as a human being could possibly get.
And what secret could our family possibly share with a sixteen-ar-old boy from a broken background? David and I had grown up in quiet, middle-class families in San Diego. We had lived clean, unremarkable lives before we met, and even quieter ones since we married. We had no dark pasts, no hidden criminal records, and no skeletons buried anywhere near our impeccably manicured lawn.
Or so I had always believed.
By 5:30 PM, the front door clicked open, and David walked into the hallway, whistling cheerfully as he dropped his briefcase on the entryway table and unbuttoned his tie.
“Hey, honey!” David called out, stepping into the kitchen with a tired but warm smile. “You won't believe the tax discrepancy we uncovered at the firm today—Sarah? Are you okay?”
His smile vanished instantly when he saw my face. I was sitting rigidly at the kitchen island, staring blankly at the wall, my hands trembling uncontrollably in my lap.
“David,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “We need to talk.”
For the next two hours, sitting under the harsh kitchen lights while the kids were upstairs doing their homework, I laid out every single word of Evelyn Cross’s chilling phone call. I watched as the color slowly drained from David’s face, his professional composure cracking piece by piece until his hands began to shake just as badly as mine.
“A forensic accountant,” David muttered, running a hand through his thinning hair as he paced back and forth across the linoleum. “Evelyn said Jace specifically looked for a forensic accountant?”
“Yes,” I said, tears of fear and confusion welling in my eyes. “She said he didn't stumble into our lives by accident. She said he engineered our match because he needed someone with your exact skillset to uncover something. David, what is going on? What does a sixteen-year-old boy in the foster system want with forensic accounting?”
David didn't answer right away. He walked over to the kitchen window, staring out into the dark, quiet suburban street as if looking for ghosts. When he turned back around, his eyes were wide with a sudden, horrifying realization.
“Ten years ago,” David said slowly, his voice dropping to a trembling whisper. “Before I joined the corporate auditing firm... I worked for a private financial intelligence agency in downtown Chicago. We were hired by an anonymous whistle-blower to investigate a massive, multi-million-dollar charity embezzlement ring operating under the guise of the Midwest Youth Welfare Initiative.”
My breath hitched. “The foster care charity?”
“Yes,” David nodded, his face pale. “The foundation was funneling millions of dollars intended for orphaned and displaced children into offshore bank accounts controlled by a syndicate of corrupt state officials and high-profile adoption brokers. I spent six months compiling the forensic ledger that eventually blew the lid off the entire operation, sending three directors to federal prison and dismantling the syndicate.”
The room plunged into an icy, suffocating silence. The puzzle pieces were suddenly snapping together with the force of a freight train.
“The agency…” I choked out. “The syndicate… Jace and Josie were in that system.”
“And if Jace is sixteen now,” David said, horror dawning in his eyes, “that means he was six years old when his parents were tied up in that corruption ring—before they mysteriously vanished, leaving him and his baby sister orphaned and tossed into the very corrupt foster care system the charity was supposed to protect.”
Before David could finish his sentence, a soft, metallic click echoed from the hallway.
May you like
We both spun around. Standing at the entrance of the kitchen, holding his canvas backpack by the strap with both hands, was Jace. His face was entirely devoid of emotion, his eyes dark and unreadable in the dim hallway light.
“You figured it out faster than I thought you would, David,” Jace said quietly, his voice carrying an icy, terrifying maturity that didn't belong to a sixteen-year-old boy. “Now... are you ready to help me find out who killed my father?”
