Chapter 5 - A Trap Set in Daylight
At six-fifteen p.m., the FBI technical team set up an audio recording rig on the glass table of my apartment. Headphones were handed to Agent Miller, Marcus, and the assistant U.S. attorney who had joined the room via secure teleconference.
“Remember, Tessa,” Agent Miller whispered, adjusting the gain on the recording software. “Keep your tone emotional, uncertain, and submissive. Make him feel like he’s completely in control. Let his arrogance do the work.”
I took a slow, deep breath, centered my thoughts on my baby girl, and pressed the call button.
Blake answered on the second ring. The background noise of clinking glasses, jazz piano, and boisterous laughter from the Prestonwood dining room was loud and clear.
“Tessa?” Blake’s voice was clipped, cold, and dripping with patronizing irritation. “Where the hell are you? I came home and found half the house emptied out. Have you completely lost your mind?”
I forced my voice to tremble slightly, letting a quiet sniffle carry across the line. “Blake... I’m scared. Marianne called me from Meridian this morning.”
The background noise abruptly dimmed as Blake walked out of the main dining room, his shoes clicking across the clubhouse marble into a quieter corridor.
“What did Marianne say?” he demanded, his voice dropping into a tense, urgent hiss.
“She... she said there was an email,” I stammered, letting my breath hitch convincingly. “An email confessing to altering invoices for Harbor Point. Blake, they’re talking about the FBI. They’re talking about taking away my analyst license. I don't understand what’s happening!”
Blake let out a long, theatrical sigh that was meant to sound comforting but reeked of smug triumph. “Tessa, calm down. Sit down and breathe. I told you this would happen if you pushed too hard.”
“Did you send that email, Blake?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “The IT department said it came from our home computer while I was in the hospital.”
Blake chuckled softly—a low, condescending sound that made every federal agent in the room freeze.
“Of course I sent it, Tessa,” Blake said smoothly. “Do you think I was going to sit back and watch your stubborn pride drag our family into poverty? You were six days away from auditing the Apex accounts. You were going to expose my entire business structure over some petty accounting ethics!”
“You forged my digital signature, Blake!” I cried out, letting real tears of fury edge into my tone. “That’s a felony!”
“It’s a rescue mission, you idiot!” Blake snarled, dropping all pretense of gentleness. “Nobody cares about a disgraced analyst! Once you take the fall, Meridian closes the file to avoid bad press. You plead out to deferred probation, we pocket three million dollars on the stock shorts, and you stay home and raise my daughter like a proper wife!”
“And if I don't plead out?”
“You don't have a choice,” Blake said coldly. “Who is a jury going to believe? An emotional, pregnant woman who had a public breakdown at her own baby shower and got slapped because she couldn't control her mouth? Or a respected commercial broker with clean credentials? You sign the paperwork my lawyer brings you tomorrow morning, Tessa, or I will testify under oath that you told me you stole the money to pay off credit card debt.”
In the room, Agent Miller gave me a sharp, decisive thumbs-up. The confession was recorded in crystal-clear digital audio, complete with federal timecodes and carrier metadata.
“Blake?” I said, my voice completely dropping the tremor, turning into cold, pure ice.
“What?”
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“A mother always knows where she belongs,” I quoted, echoing the cruel words he had spat at my coworkers on Saturday. “And a criminal belongs in a cell.”
I hung up the phone.
