Twenty minutes later, I shoved my shoulder against the splintering wood of Room 302. The door banged open, hitting the drywall with a loud crack.

A harsh wave of cheap floral perfume hit my face.

"Evan!" I shouted, stepping over the threshold.

Silence answered. The room was empty. The bedsheets were stripped, the closet doors hung wide open, and not one piece of luggage remained.

"He's not here," Marcus said. He filled the doorway with his massive frame, glaring at the vacant space.

Nina pushed past her brother, clutching Lily to her chest. "Evan? Honey, are you in the bathroom?"

She rushed toward the open bathroom door, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.

"Nobody is in there," I said, scanning the bare dressers.

I marched toward the bed. My shoe connected with a glass vodka bottle. It spun across the stained carpet and clinked against the metal leg of the nightstand.

I dropped to my knees, sweeping my hand under the cheap furniture. My fingers brushed against stiff paper.

I pulled it out. A torn boarding pass.

"Flight to Mexico City," I read aloud, standing up. I shoved the torn paper toward Nina's face as she emerged from the bathroom. "Is this where you two planned to run off with my money?"

Nina slapped my hand away. "I don't know anything about Mexico. He told me he was going to a tech conference in Chicago."

"Chicago is in the opposite direction," I said. "And Evan hates the cold."

"You don't know him," Nina sneered. She adjusted the toddler on her hip. "You just stalk his credit cards."

"I pay his credit cards," I corrected her.

Marcus walked past me, his heavy shoes thudding against the floorboards. He crouched near the bathroom door, reaching under the edge of the sink.

He stood up, holding a small, velvet-covered box.

"What is that?" Nina asked, taking a step inside.

Marcus flipped the lid open. "Empty."

He turned it over, reading the gold foil stamped on the bottom. "Cartier."

I marched over and snatched it from his rough palm. I traced the logo with my thumb.

"That matches the fifteen thousand dollar charge on his platinum card," I said, staring directly at Nina. "The one from last Tuesday. I told you about it at the station."

Marcus spun toward his sister. His jaw tightened. "Did he give you a ring, Nina?"

"No," she stammered, shrinking back against the doorframe. "I swear, Marcus. I've never seen that box before."

"Do not lie to me," Marcus growled. He closed the distance between them, pointing a thick finger at her face. "You told me he was broke this month. You asked me to cover your rent."

"He was broke!" Nina cried. She bounced a fussy Lily, trying to soothe the whining child. "He said the startup was bleeding cash. He hasn't given me a dime in three weeks."

I laughed. The harsh, bitter sound echoed off the cheap motel walls. "Bleeding cash? He just cleared half a million in Series A funding. I signed the release forms myself."

Marcus stared at his sister. The unshakeable loyalty in his dark eyes finally fractured. He shifted his weight, crossing his muscular arms slowly.

"He told me he was working late every night this week," I said, stepping closer to Nina. "What did he tell you?"

"He was home every night," Nina fired back, her chin raised. "He cooked dinner for Lily and me."

"Bullshit," I said. "I have the security footage from our driveway. He pulled in at midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday."

Nina opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She glanced at Marcus, seeking backup, but he was staring at the empty ring box on the bed.

"If he was home with you," I pressed, "then who was he buying a fifteen-thousand-dollar ring for? Because it clearly isn't on your finger."

Nina hid her left hand behind Lily's back. "He was probably saving it for my birthday."

"Your birthday is in October," Marcus interrupted.

Nina snapped her head toward him. "Whose side are you on

The sweltering heat of the asphalt hit my face the second we pushed out of the motel room.

"Stop walking," I demanded.

I lunged forward and clamped my hand over Nina's shoulder, spinning her around before she could reach the driver's side of her car.

"Did you sign it?" I shouted, my voice echoing off the cheap stucco walls of the motel exterior. "The five-million-dollar life insurance policy he finalized last month? Are you splitting the payout when he miraculously turns up dead in Mexico?"

Marcus shoved his thick arm between us. He broke my grip with a single, forceful swipe.

"Back up," Marcus warned. He planted his boots wide, shielding his sister from me.

Nina stumbled against the side of a rusted pickup truck. She clutched Lily to her chest, her knuckles turning white. Tears spilled over her mascara-stained cheeks, leaving dark tracks down her pale face.

"I don't know anything about an insurance policy!" Nina cried. "He told me he was setting up a college trust fund for Lily. He made me sign a stack of legal papers two weeks ago. He said it was just standard banking forms."

"You signed blind documents?" I asked, stepping toward her again. "Do you realize what he is doing? He's draining my company to fund a fake life, and now he is setting up a massive payout. If he fakes his death, you are the one holding the bag. The police will look at the beneficiary."

"He'd never do that to us," Nina stammered. She kissed the top of Lily's head, rocking the fussy toddler. "He loves this little girl. He bought her a pony for her second birthday. He's a good father."

I let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "He bought that pony with the money I saved for my own IVF treatments. He's a parasite, Nina. He attaches himself to whoever can fund his next scheme."

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. He dragged his heavy hand down his jawline, his expression darkening as the reality of the situation settled over him.

"He played you, Nina," Marcus muttered. "He played both of you."

"He didn't play me," I snapped, glaring at the towering mechanic. "He stole from me. And I'm getting every single cent back."

"How?" Nina asked, her voice trembling. "He's gone. The motel room is empty. He has a head start."

"Watch me," I promised.

I pulled my cell phone from my leather purse and unlocked the screen, holding it up for them to see.

"I'm calling my legal team at dawn," I said, my tone dead flat. "I'm freezing the startup capital. I'll lock every bank account attached to his social security number. I'm calling David, the corporate accountant, and forcing a full audit of the Series A funds. By noon tomorrow, Evan won't be able to buy a single cup of coffee."

Nina whimpered. She leaned heavily against the truck door. "The joint account. My rent money is in there. My car payment is due on Friday."

"Then you better find a job," I replied.

Marcus stepped closer, towering over me. The smell of motor oil and stale sweat clung to his faded blue jumpsuit.

"Listen to me," Marcus said, keeping his voice low and dangerous. "If you freeze those accounts, the feds will audit everything. They'll look at Nina. She's on paper as his wife. They'll charge her as an accomplice to wire fraud."

"She should have thought of that before she married a married man," I shot back.

"She didn't know!" Marcus roared, his temper finally snapping. The veins in his thick neck bulged against his collar. "He showed her fake divorce papers. He bought her a diamond ring. He gave her a kid. Do not act like you are the only victim here."

I held my ground, refusing to flinch under his imposing shadow. "That's not my problem."

"Make it your problem," Marcus countered. He crossed his muscular arms over his chest. "You bring in the lawyers, this gets tied up in court for months. Evan disappears for good. He pays off the right people and vanishes across the border. You want your money back? You want answers? Let me handle it."

I lowered my phone, narrowing my eyes. "How exactly are you going to find him?"

"I run a salvage yard on the east side," Marcus explained. "I know people who track skip tracers. Guys who monitor off-the-books flights and forge passports. People the police don't talk to."

"Criminals," I clarified.

"Results," Marcus corrected. "Lawyers send strongly worded letters. My guys kick down doors. We find out exactly what flight he got on, who he paid, and where he landed."

"And what do you want in return?" I asked

I slammed the thick stack of financial reports onto the polished mahogany desk. The heavy thud echoed off the glass walls of the corner office.

"Freeze the accounts, Robert," I demanded. "Right now."

Robert adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and stared at the top page. He shook his head. "I can't do that, Claire."

"Why not?" I placed both hands flat on his desk, leaning forward. "He stole from my company. You're my corporate attorney. File the injunction."

Robert slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. A blue ink signature sat at the bottom of a block of dense legal text. My signature.

"You signed a blanket asset transfer authorization three months ago," Robert said. His voice stayed infuriatingly calm. "Evan used this to drain seventy percent of your liquid capital yesterday morning."

I stared at my own handwriting. My stomach dropped.

"He told me that was a standard tax liability waiver for the new office lease," I whispered, tracing the curve of the ink.

"It wasn't," Robert replied. "He wired the funds to three different offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands. The money is gone. Legally, you gave him permission to move it."

"I gave him permission to handle the lease," I shot back, my voice rising. "This is fraud. Call the bank. Tell them the authorization was obtained under false pretenses."

"The bank verified the transfer with a secondary phone call," Robert stated, tapping a manicured finger against the file. "Someone claiming to be you confirmed the transaction over the phone."

My eyes widened. "I never spoke to the bank."

"A female voice passed the security questions," Robert said. "Mother's maiden name, first pet, childhood street. Whoever it was, she had your entire profile."

Nina.

My fingernails dug into the leather edge of the desk. Evan had fed her my security answers. He used his fake wife to rob his real one.

"How much exactly did he take?" I demanded.

"Four point two million," Robert answered flatly.

"That leaves barely enough to cover payroll next week," I said, my voice trembling with suppressed rage.

"You need to prepare for bankruptcy, Claire," Robert advised.

"I'm not filing for bankruptcy," I snapped. "I built that software firm from the ground up."

"Legally, Evan was your co-founder," Robert reminded me. "He'd full executive privileges."

"Take this to court," I ordered.

"It's your signature on a legally binding document," Robert countered. He folded his hands together. "If we file a lawsuit, it will take years to untangle. You don't have the remaining capital to fight a protracted legal battle. The firm requires a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer to initiate litigation of this scale."

I snatched the paper off his desk. My jaw tightened so hard my teeth ached. The legal system wasn't going to help me. I needed Marcus.

Forty minutes later, I pulled my sedan into the gravel lot of a dilapidated auto shop on the east side. The heavy scent of motor oil and exhaust fumes hit my face as I stepped out of the car.

Inside the dimly lit garage, Marcus stood over a gutted engine block. He tossed a heavy steel wrench into a red metal toolbox. The loud clang made me flinch.

"Did you get the accounts frozen?" Marcus asked, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag.

"He drained them," I said, marching past a stack of tires. "Four point two million dollars. He used a blank authorization form he tricked me into signing, and a female accomplice to bypass the bank's security."

Marcus stopped wiping his hands. He tossed the rag onto a workbench. "You think it was Nina."

"Who else knows my mother's maiden name and my childhood street?" I challenged. "He primed her for this."

"Nina is sitting in my living room crying over a stack of unpaid bills," Marcus growled, stepping into my path. "She didn't call your bank. She barely knows how to log into her own email."

"Then he hired an actress," I shot back, refusing to back down. "It doesn't matter who made the call. The money is gone. Did your people find him?"

Marcus walked over to a mini-fridge in the corner, pulled out a plastic water bottle, and tossed it to me. I caught it against my chest.

"My guys found something," Marcus murmured, his voice lowering low. He stepped closer, glancing over his shoulder toward the open garage bay doors. "Evan didn't just run. He hired professionals."

"What do you mean?" I asked, gripping the cold plastic.

"A cleaner," Marcus clarified. "My contact in the surveillance circuit tried to pull the municipal traffic feeds around the motel. The footage is gone. Wiped clean from the city servers."

My grip on the bottle tightened until the plastic crinkled. "Someone hacked the city cameras for him?"

"For the right price, you can buy a digital ghost," Marcus said. "They overwrite the server logs. The cops would just think it was a routine system glitch."

"So we have nothing," I stated, frustration boiling over.

"I didn't say that," Marcus replied.

He motioned for me to follow him into a cramped back office. The walls were lined with pegboards, and a single desk held a glowing computer monitor.

Marcus tapped the keyboard. A grainy, low-resolution image popped up on the screen.

"A pawn shop across the street from the motel has a private analog camera," Marcus explained, pointing a thick finger at the monitor. "Not connected to the internet. The cleaner couldn't hack it remotely. My guy went in and bought the physical tape."

I leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the blurry image.

A man stood on the sidewalk, his face obscured by the low quality of the lens. But I recognized the slope of his shoulders. I recognized the expensive wool coat I'd bought him for our fifth anniversary.

"That's Evan," I said.

"Look at his hand," Marcus directed.

I traced my eyes down the screen. Evan gripped a heavy black briefcase.

"That's where the cash went," I muttered. "He liquidated the offshore accounts into hard currency. He's carrying my company in that box."

Marcus hit the right arrow key. The next photo showed Evan climbing into the back of a dark gray van.

"No license plates," Marcus noted. "Tinted windows. Professional transport."

"Can your guys track a van with no plates?" I asked.

"Already on it," Marcus replied. He reached for the mouse. "We just need to enhance the reflection on the pawn shop window to get a partial DOT number off the side of the van."

Before he could click the image, the screen flickered. The grainy photo vanished, replaced by a solid black square.

"What did you do?" I asked, stepping back.

"Nothing," Marcus grunted, hammering the escape key. "The system is locked."

The mouse cursor disappeared. Lines of green code rapidly scrolled down the black screen, overwriting the operating system. The computer fan whirred loudly, spinning out of control as the processor overheated.

"Someone is in the network," Marcus said, his hands flying across the keyboard. "They're wiping the hard drive."

"Stop them!" I yelled.

"I'm locked out," Marcus shot back. "They left a backdoor in the municipal servers to track anyone who went looking for the missing footage."

A sharp burst of static crackled through the cheap desktop speakers. The noise morphed into a high-pitched, mechanical laugh. The sound grated against my eardrums.

"Stop looking," a distorted, synthetic voice hissed through the speakers. "You're both pawns."

Marcus lunged under the desk and ripped the power cord from the wall.