Chapter 244
Chapter 240: The Thread
CAMERON
I had not slept.
This was not a complaint, it was simply a fact, logged the way I logged everything, useful primarily because it told me how much margin I had left before my judgment started to degrade. I had perhaps four more hours before that happened. I intended to use them,
Marcus called at six on a secure line, which meant he had something worth the precaution.
“He’s in custody,” Marcus said. No preamble. “Chicago PD picked him up at an urgent care clinic two hours ago. Stab wound to the lower abdomen, doesn’t match the story he gave the intake nurse. They flagged it, ran his name, got a hit against the description from the facility’s morning security sweep p>
I sat up straighter at the kitchen table. “Dante connected p>
“Dante connected,” Marcus confirmed. “Hard enough to leave the man bleeding and looking for a clinic instead of finishing the job. He’s lucky to be alive. So is the man who attacked him, frankly, a few inches different and that knee would have done worse p>
“Is he talking p>
“No. Lawyered up immediately. Won’t give a name beyond what’s on a fake ID that’s already flagged as fabricated.” A pause. “But Cameron, we don’t need him to talk. We have the trail p>
I made coffee while Marcus walked me through it, because my hands needed something to do that wasn’t gripping the phone too tightly.
“The prepaid phone,” he said. “Same one from the December calls, we’d already flagged the number. We traced the purchase to a numbered account. Took most of the night, but my analyst got through three shell layers. Standard laundering architecture, the kind that takes real money and real patience to set up, not something an amateur improvises in a week p>
“And underneath the shells p>
ľ
“A Hayes Industries subsidiary account,” Marcus said. “Logan has personal signing authority on it. Has had it for years,m it predates any of this. It’s not a smoking gun sitting on his desk. It’s three layers removed and dressed up to look like ordinary corporate movement. But it’s there p>
I stood very still in the kitchen, coffee forgotten in my hand.
“How clean is it,” I said.
“Not courtroom-clean,” Marcus said, with the specific honesty I paid him for. “A decent defense attorney argues distance. Plausible deniability. Corporate complexity, a subsidiary account, multiple signatories, the funds could theoretically have moved without his direct knowledge even with his name on the authority.” A pause. “It’s close, Cameron. It’s very close. But it’s not closed p>
I exhaled slowly.
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The Third Here!
CIP
“Get me everything.” I said. “Every transaction, every timestamp, every shell entity name. I want the full architecture laid out so even someone who’s never read a financial statement could follow the line from the prepaid phone to his signature p>
“Already building it, Marcus said. “I’ll have something formal by this afternoon p>
I called Adaeze at seven.
She picked up immediately, which told me she had also not been sleeping much, the holiday docket and an emergency client situation apparently competing for the same depleted hours.
I gave her everything. The car. The attack. The blood. The custody. The financial trail, three shells deep, ending at a signature Logan held.
She was quiet for a long moment when I finished. Then: “This is significant p>
“How significant p>
“Cautiously,” she said, choosing the word with her usual precision. “It strengthens everything for the custody ruling, the pattern is now undeniable to any reasonable judge. Stalking complaint, garden incident, now an attack on the mother’s partner with a financial trail running toward the father. But Cameron, I need to be clear about something. This isn’t only a family court matter anymore p>
“I know p>
“This is attempted murder,” she said, flatly. “Or conspiracy to commit it, depending on how the prosecutor wants to charge it. That needs to go to the police as a criminal matter, formally, separate from the custody filing. The detective assigned to Dante’s case needs everything you just gave me – today, not folded
quietly into a custody exhibit for January p>
“I was already planning to call him,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Because Cameron – if this is real, if the trail holds, we are no longer talking about supervised visitation and access schedules. We are talking about a man who may have ordered an attempted murder. That changes everything about how fast this moves and what protections Sedona and Nick need immediately, not in February p>
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I looked out the kitchen window. Chicago, grey and indifferent, going about its morning the way it always did regardless of what was happening inside any particular house.
“Send me the detective’s direct line,” I said. “I’ll call within the hour p>
We spent forty minutes building the timeline together-Adaeze on one end with her legal precision, me on the other with Reeve’s raw data, the two disciplines locking together into something that would eventually need to survive a courtroom or a grand jury or both.
By the end of it I had a document that traced, cleanly, the entire arc: the operative in Seattle, the stand-down that I now understood had been premature, the December calls, the stolen car, the attack, the financial trail. Not proof beyond doubt. But a pattern no reasonable person could dismiss as coincidence.
I called the detective at eight-fifteen.
He listened to all of it without interrupting, the specific professional quiet of someone taking careful notes. At the end he said: “Send everything you have. We’ll want Marcus Reeve’s analyst to walk our financial crimes unit through the shell structure directly- that kind of trail needs an expert who built it, not just the paper trail itself p>
“He’ll cooperate fully,” I said.
“Good.” A pause. “This is a serious case, Mr. Preston. I want you to understand that we’re treating it as
such p>
“I understand,” I said.
I hung up and sat at the kitchen table with the full shape of it laid out in front of me – every shell entity, every transaction, every line connecting a stolen car and a knife in a parking lot to a name I had grown up despising slowly across the last seventeen months.
I went up to find Sedona at nine.
She was awake, sitting on t the bed in the guest room, she’d claimed since arriving in Chicago,. She was still in yesterday’s clothes. Her face showed clearly she had not slept much either. She looked up when I
୮*
came in.
“How is he,” she said. “I mean, I know he’s stable. How is he really p>
“Stable,” I said. “Resting. The doctor’s optimistic about a full recovery, no permanent damage from the concussion.” I sat down across from her. “He’ll be sore for weeks. But he’s going to be fine p>
“And the man who did it p>
“In custody,” I said. “Picked up this morning p>
Something in her face shifted – relief, caution, the careful management of hope she’d learned not to extend too far in advance of confirmation. “Is there a connection? To-” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.
I looked at her for a moment.
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There was a version of this conversation where told her everything – the shell accounts, the signature, The forty minutes with Adaeze, the detective’s careful professional voice saying we’re treating it as such. She deserved that version, eventually. She deserved all of it.
But she hadn’t slept. And the trail wasn’t finished, wasn’t courtroom-clean, wasn’t yet the kind of certainty I wanted to hand her before she’d had even a few hours of rest.
“There’s progress,” I said. This was true. did not lie to my sister, not ever, not even to protect her. “Marcus is building the financial trail. The police have it now as a criminal matter, not just something folded into the custody case. It’s moving p>
“Cameron.” She looked at me carefully. “How close is the trail p>
I held her eyes.
“Close enough that I called a detective at eight-fifteen this morning instead of waiting for Adaeze to fold it into a January filing,” I said. “That’s how close it is p>
She absorbed this. Nodded slowly.
“I want the rest,” she said. “All of it. Today p>
“You’ll have it,” I said. “After you sleep. I promise you that p>
She looked at me for a long moment – the specific look she’d given me her entire life, the one that always knew exactly how much I was holding back and exactly why, and had always, eventually, let me hold it a little longer when the reason was good enough.
“Okay,” she said. “After I sleep p>
I stood up to go. When I got at the door I looked back at her. I saw she was still sitting on the bed exhausted. Adaeze carried more than any one person should have to carry in a single week And somehow still standing on the other side of every single thing that had tried to break her.
“Sleep,” I said.
She closed her eyes.
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